


Blue

by ScopesMonkey



Series: Sugarverse [46]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Crime, Injured Sherlock, M/M, Murder, Mystery, Recovery, concussion, puzzle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:50:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScopesMonkey/pseuds/ScopesMonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock tries to find the common thread in a series of seemingly random murders from across England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The photograph shows two people, a man and a woman, lying back to back on a cheap and worn light brown carpet, the woman facing a old, dark red couch with frayed fabric near its base, where it rests against the carpet. They are bound together by silk scarves, which seems incongruous given the condition of the carpet and the couch. They are positioned so that the tops of their heads are in the same place, even though the man is ten centimetres taller than the woman. The scarf binding their heads together, crossing their foreheads and their ears, is green. They are also tied together across the chest, at the waist, and at the woman's ankles, which is mid-calf for the man, with blue scarves.

The file indicates they were moved after death, placed liked this once they had each been shot in the head, in different rooms of the small house. The bullet wounds have been fairly expertly cleaned so that there is little blood on the scarf binding their heads. Roberta Moresy, thirty-four, was a primary school teacher. Her husband, Alex Moresy, also thirty-four, was a delivery driver. Neither of them have any previous criminal records, nor have they any apparent enemies. Both were active members in their church, and generally well liked. They were reported missing after both of them failed to arrive at work on Monday, and the patrol officers who went to their house to check on them found them in the living room in the position shown in the photograph. The medical examiner estimates they died sometime between ten pm on Saturday evening and two am on Sunday morning.

The file also indicates no disturbance in the area, and none of the doors or windows have been forced, although the front door was unlocked, but shut when officers arrived. The female victim's sister reports they often left their door unlocked when at home during the day, but that it would be unusual to do so overnight. No suspicious or unidentified fingerprints were found at the scene. Neighbours reported no unusual activity or persons in the area that night, and no one recalls hearing a gunshot, or gunshots. The female victim was shot in the bathroom, the male victim in the kitchen.

No suspects have been identified and all potential suspects have been cleared by the police. As of April seventeenth, the case has officially gone cold.

* * *

(November)

"Did you call John?"

"That's the fifth time in the last ten minutes you've asked me that. Yes, I called John. He's on his way."

"Don't be absurd," Sherlock said, blinking, trying to clear his vision, which was oddly hazy, so that the figure of the man standing next to his gurney was blurred around the edges. Sherlock frowned – why did Sam have that graze on his cheek? He refocused, with an unusual amount of effort, he thought. "I'd have remembered if I asked you."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"No, you wouldn't. You have a concussion."

"Also absurd. I'd remember that, too."

Sam dropped his head into his hands and Sherlock sat up – he was clearly fine, because _he_ wasn't the one sporting that graze with a bruise on his cheek, nor with the scrapes on his knuckles. Sam looked as though he'd been in a fight, but not too bad of one. Although Sherlock wondered what the other bloke looked like.

"Yes, you do! Don't get up again!"

"What do you mean, again?"

"Do I have to get them to strap you to the bed? For God's sake, lie back down or I'll arrest you myself for being a bloody idiot! You tried this three minutes ago and nearly gave yourself a second concussion on the bed railings just sitting up! And you've been asking me if I called John at least every other minute since they put you in the ambulance!"

"I don't need an ambulance," Sherlock said with absolute certainty, although he seemed to remember something about a paramedic. "And you have no authority as an Interpol agent to arrest me. I'm completely fine."

"You are bleeding from your head because some bloke in the pub clocked you with a beer mug!" Sam shot back, but he was repressing a grin when he said this. Sherlock found this reaction somewhat unreasonable. Surely a head wound – which he didn't have – wasn't cause for amusement?

"Don't be ridiculous, no one has any reason to hit me with a beer mug," he countered, but there was some hazy memory nudging at the back of his mind. They had been in a pub, hadn't they? And John had been on his way from an unusually long day at the clinic to join them? Had there been some kind of row? Sherlock could almost hear raised voices and he frowned, narrowing his eyes, trying to remember. Something else was vying for his attention, though.

He looked up quickly then regretted it, dizziness sweeping over him. Swallowing against it, he tried to focus on Sam, who had his eyebrows raised and an I-told-you-so expression on his face. Sherlock ignored that for the more pressing matter.

"Did you call John?" he asked.

Sam threw up his arms but was saved from answering when the offensively pale blue curtain that gave them absolutely no privacy from the rest of the emergency room was twitched back and a familiar figure stepped in. Sherlock's heart leapt at the possibility that was John – so Sam _had_ called him, good – but it was a nurse, in dark blue scrubs, her blond hair pulled into a ponytail, her light blue eyes giving him a knowing look.

Sherlock blinked hard, trying to bring up her name. He felt vaguely drugged, then wondered what they'd given him, opening his eyes again, trying to see an IV line. The nurse and the memory of an IV line were suddenly linked and he felt certain he'd seen her before, and knew her.

"I thought so," she was saying and Sherlock tried to refocus again. Where was John? Had Sam called him? "When one of the A&E nurses on a break told me they had a patient with the odd name of Sherlock, I thought it couldn't be a coincidence."

Sam was looking at the nurse, Sherlock noted. Quite intently. Sherlock forgot trying to recall her name and thought about this – also, where was his phone, he needed to call John – because Sam didn't know this nurse, did he? What was so interesting about her?

"Sandra," Sherlock said, without thinking about it. Yes, Sandra. He remembered now. But of course, he'd always remembered. He wondered why it was so hard to think straight, and where John was, and why no one was calling him. Surely John should be here?

"You know each other?" Sam asked. Still looking at Sandra. She looked at him, and smiled. Sam smiled back.

"Yes, I was his nurse here once before," she said and extended her hand across the foot of the bed. Sam gripped it, holding it a moment longer than Sherlock thought necessary. "Sandra Casey."

"Sam Mitchell."

"Sandra, have him call John," Sherlock murmured and wondered at the flash of exasperation on Sam's features at that.

"I've already called him," Sam sighed, but looking at Sandra, not at Sherlock. That wasn't right, was it? He should be talking to Sherlock about John. Sherlock's eyes drifted shut, he felt tired suddenly and wondered if he could get a blanket or perhaps two. He wished he were at home, in bed, curled up next to John, where it wasn't cold and there weren't squeaking shoes and yammering voices everywhere.

"No, no," a voice said and he felt someone smack his cheeks. "Don't you dare. Wake up, Sherlock, right now."

Sandra's eyes were evaluating him when he managed to open his, her expression focused and concerned, clearing somewhat when he met her gaze. Then she glanced over her shoulder and her expression shifted somewhat, only a bit, but Sherlock caught it. He frowned – what was that?

"Has he been seen by a doctor?"

Sam had moved farther up the other side of the bed, standing next to Sherlock's elbow, looking at the nurse.

"They said they'd get to him as soon as they could, but Friday night, he's not the worst off right now."

"That's probably true, but I'll see what I can do," she said, straightening up, glancing down at Sherlock, but only briefly. "Stay with him until John gets here, don't let him fall asleep–"

"I'm here!" a very familiar voice said and Sherlock's lips stretched into a warm hazy smile. This was _lovely_.

"John!" Sherlock said, starting to sit up again, but two firm hands on his chest, one Sandra's, one Sam's, pushed him down. He scowled at both of them – were they taking sides against him now? They'd only just met. That was hardly fair.

"Sherlock, what the hell happened? Who– Sandra? What are you doing here?"

"Helping out," the nurse said shortly, nodding at John.

"Nothing happened," Sherlock insisted, feeling much warmer now that John was there. They could go home. He could curl up in their bed with John like he wanted to.

But why was John wearing that pinched expression? Sherlock didn't like that expression, it usually meant he was not going to get his way. He disliked not getting his way. He much preferred it when John gave into what he wanted.

"I'm fine, we can go home now that you're here."

"You're not going anywhere!" John snapped and Sherlock scowled then felt oddly dizzy. Why did his head hurt? "Sam, what the bloody hell happened?"

"Some idiot started a row in the pub," Sam sighed.

"What, with Sherlock?" John asked, and Sherlock snickered at the shocked expression in his husband's voice. It was too endearing. He reached for John's hand, wondering why he was standing so far away, and John switched places with Sandra, folding his warm hands over Sherlock's. Sherlock examined them vaguely, trying to interweave their fingers so that their wedding bands were side-by-side. It was surprisingly complicated. But he liked the way the light gleamed off the metals.

"No, Sherlock's skull just got in the way of someone's beer mug," Sam sighed and Sherlock looked up, surprised at this. He'd been hit? He didn't remember that. Sam must be wrong. "He was unconscious for fifteen, twenty seconds, I think. I was a bit busy trying to get a couple blokes away from us."

He gestured to his face and Sherlock noted that he had a graze and a bruise on his cheek and scrapes on his knuckles. Had he been fighting? Oh yes, he'd just said.

"Has he been seen by a doctor yet?" John asked and Sherlock snickered again.

"You sound like Sandra," Sherlock commented and John stared at him, then sighed.

"Let me see," he said. "Sandra, can you help me out here?"

She moved around the bed and Sam stepped back smoothly for her, earning a smile as thanks. Sherlock began to chuckle, then hissed when John's fingers moved the bandage carefully and pressed against the crown of his head, which was inexplicably tender.

"Doesn't look like there's any glass, but he could use a few stitches."

"No stitches!" Sherlock snapped, then hissed again as John's fingers moved along his scalp, sending a cold wave down his neck, leaving him feeling more dizzy now, and suddenly nauseous. "John, stop, it's making me sick."

"Lie back down," John ordered and Sherlock obeyed without question. "No, don't close your eyes, Sherlock. You can't fall asleep, all right? Listen to me, right now."

"I'm listening," Sherlock muttered. He felt John take one of his hands and squeeze it and Sherlock tried to squeeze back, but it felt difficult, as though he were moving through water.

He heard the curtain twitch open again and tried to refocus. Everything seemed too bright but hazy at the same time, and Sam still looked indistinct around the edges, as did Sandra, and even John. He tried to focus on John, who wasn't watching him now, but turned away. Sherlock followed John's gaze to see someone new standing by the curtain, in dark, crisp clothing. A uniform. Ah, a police officer.

"Agent Mitchell?" the officer asked. "We're ready for you now."

"I need to go," Sam sighed. "Sorry about this, John."

"Did you start the fight?" John asked.

Sam snorted sarcastically and Sherlock saw Sandra smile again, the corners of her eyes crinkling ever so slightly.

"Hardly," he said. "Call me when you can."

John nodded and Sam glanced at Sandra again.

"Good to meet you, Sandra," he said, smiling. He extended his hand again and she took it, not quite a handshake.

"And you," she said, giving him a smile in return. Sam was gone then, with a whisper of the curtain, and the click of his shoes and the officer's sounding loud compared to the squeak of the nurses shoes on the floor outside.

"I don't suppose you're going to admit to starting the fight, are you?" John said, looking back at Sherlock, who was glad to have the attention returned to him again. He loved John's brown eyes, which were so bright and dark.

"What fight?" he murmured. It was the wrong thing to say. John's eyes were darker now, and unhappy.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked. Sherlock tried to focus.

"Two," he said and John sighed.

"That's good at least. Look, focus, follow my finger."

This seemed inane but Sherlock's eyes moved after John's finger anyway, but he felt slow, detached. Sleepy. He wanted to go home and sleep – why were they even there?

"I think he'll be all right," John said, looking over at Sandra, who was still beside the bed, watching with folded arms. "But this needs to be cleaned properly and stitched. I know they're busy out there. Can you get me the supplies?"

"Absolutely," she agreed and there was another rustle of the curtain as she disappeared. Sherlock saw John's eyes again, watching him carefully and tried to smile, to show he was fine, but it was tiring and he felt stiff now, and his head was beginning to ache.

"Sherlock, you can't go to sleep. I know you want to. Stay awake."

"Can we go home?" Sherlock murmured.

"Yes, soon," John promised. "We'll get you sewn up and then we can go."

"I need my wallet," Sherlock said then, suddenly.

"Your wallet? No, you don't need your wallet. Just wait, Sandra will be back soon. We'll get you sorted out."

"I need my wallet," Sherlock said, sitting up and then feeling dizzy again, but he set his jaw against it, because it made no sense. He needed his wallet. This was important. Whatever else was going on could wait. It was vital John know this.

"Whoa, whoa, Sherlock, lie down, you're going to make yourself pass out!" John snapped, pushing him back down, but Sherlock shrugged off John's hands, trying to sit up again. He felt one of John's forearms against his chest and then he was back against the pillows, breathing hard, the dizziness making silver spots dance on the edges of his vision, darting away when he tried to see them.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on breathing but John was smacking his face lightly.

"No, no sleeping!"

"I need my wallet, John."

There was a sigh and movement and the rustle of plastic underneath the bed. Sherlock opened his eyes at this, and saw John standing, holding a white plastic hospital bag in one hand, fishing Sherlock's wallet out with the other.

"Here," he said, pressing the stiff leather into Sherlock's hands. "Hold onto that, then, if it makes you happy."

"Not for me," Sherlock muttered. He flipped it open, wondering why his fingers felt so awkward, they were never awkward, he'd trained them so well on the violin. He snarled and managed to get them to cooperate but now it was hard to focus, to see what he was looking for. He gave another growl then found it suddenly, pulling out the crisp white business card.

"Okay," he said to John, trying to pass it back. He felt John's fingers close around his again and his wallet was gone, back in the bag with his shoes, which they'd stolen when he'd come in – now his feet were cold, he realized.

"All right, back," Sandra said and Sherlock grunted, extending his arm to her. John gave him a puzzled look but Sherlock ignored him, waving the business card once, emphatically. She passed the supplies off to John, who sorted quickly them on the small wheeling table beside the bed, then took the card. Sherlock let out a sigh of relief, his arm dropping back down.

"You're giving me your friend's business card?" she asked.

"Yes," Sherlock murmured. He saw John and Sandra exchange a look and felt annoyed – this was taking too long.

"John, get on with it!" he managed to snap, but his voice seemed distant, and it was still so hard to focus. How long had it been since that had begun? He tried to remember, and there was something about a pub, and an ambulance, and some shouting, but it was hazy, and John was there and he wanted to go home. He said this last bit out loud, with as much conviction as he could muster.

"All right," John said, sounding displeased but looking less so. "I'm going to clean it, which will sting, then give you something against the pain. You'll need to hold still. And no falling asleep. Can you do that?"

"And then we can go home?"

For some reason, this made John's lips twitch into a smile.

"If you're good, then yes, we can go home," he agreed.


	2. Chapter 2

The photograph shows two people, a man and a woman, lying back to back on a grey slate tiled floor, the man facing a set of dark varnished oak kitchen cupboards, the base of which is just visible in the frame. They are bound together by silk scarves. They are positioned so that the tops of their heads are in the same place, which is not difficult, since they are within a centimetre and a half of each other in terms of height. The scarves, which are all blue, bind them at the head, the chest, the waist, and the ankles.

The file indicates that they were moved after death, placed liked this once they had each been shot, the man in the chest, the woman in the back of the head. The bullet wounds have been fairly expertly cleaned so that there is little blood on the scarves binding their heads and chests. James Anderson, seventy-six, was a retired aviation engineer. His wife, Abbey Anderson, seventy-four, was a homemaker. Neither of them have any previous criminal records, nor have they any apparent enemies. They moved from London to the country after James Anderson retired. Both were active members of their local gardening community, as well as avid outdoor enthusiasts, and belonged to a local walking club for seniors. They were reported missing after neither could be reached by phone after failing to meet some friends for a scheduled dinner. The patrol officer who went to their house to check on them found them in the kitchen in the position shown in the photograph. The medical examiner estimates they died sometime between nine pm on Thursday evening and three am on Saturday morning.

The file also indicates no disturbance in the area, and none of the doors or windows have been forced, although the front door was unlocked, but shut when the officer arrived. The victims' friends indicate that they did not leave their doors unlocked, even when they were home. No suspicious or unidentified fingerprints were found at the scene. No reports of unusual activity or persons in the area were given, but the nearest neighbours are approximately one mile away, so it is unlikely that a gunshot would have been heard, or noticed if it had been heard. Small game hunting is common in this area, so gunfire is not often reported or noted. Both victims were shot in their living room.

No suspects were ever identified despite extensive questioning of local residents and visitors to the area by the police. As of July thirty-first, the case has officially gone cold.

* * *

(November)

Sherlock blinked, blinked again, then screwed his eyes shut, willing himself to wake up. _Open_ , he told his eyes _. Open._ He managed to slit his eyes open, then closed them quickly, pressing a palm over them, wincing and not quite stifling the groan that slipped past his lips.

"Good, you're awake," a familiar voice said, softly.

"No," Sherlock whispered.

"Yes, you are," John said. "Open your eyes. I have some ibuprofen for you."

"My head hurts." Speaking in anything above a whisper seemed unwise, although he wasn't certain why. Where was he? Familiar feelings all around, underneath him, the mattress, on top of him, on either side, the covers, the pillow pressed against his left cheek, the smells, like John and warmth and himself. Their bed, he was in their bed. The light seemed unusually bright though and he kept his eyes covered until John's fingers wrapped around his hand, pulling it away.

"Come on, Sherlock," John said gently. "I know you don't want to, but you have to."

"No, I don't, you can't make me," Sherlock moaned. "I can sleep in if I want."

"It's already gone past eleven," John replied. He released Sherlock's hand and Sherlock raised it to his head, wanting to press it against his skull, to push back against the hammering that was coming from right inside his brain, that was squeezing his temples.

"No!" John said sharply, grasping his hand again, and Sherlock winced at the sound, screwing his eyes shut again. "Don't touch it! You have a concussion."

At this, Sherlock managed to blink himself awake fully and focus slowly on John, who was crouched in front of him, wearing one of his concerned doctor expressions, watching Sherlock carefully. Evaluating him. Sherlock did not like when he was subjected to that kind of analysis. That was his job, not John's.

"What?" Sherlock asked.

"Here," John said, moving to put the glass of water and the two pills he was holding on the bedside table. There was a ring on the wooden surface from where a glass had already been sitting sometime previous. "Come on, I'll help you sit up. Slowly."

Sherlock groaned at the renewed pounding in his head as John helped him shift from lying on his side to sitting up, leaning forward, propped against John's chest as the doctor shifted the pillows behind him. When they were covering the headboard enough to allow Sherlock to sit against them, John leaned him back carefully.

"Easy, easy," John said, when Sherlock tried to shift himself using his hands.

"I'm not a child," Sherlock scowled.

"No, but you do have a concussion and by the looks of all that wincing, a killer headache." He picked up the glass again and the two pills. "The hospital gave you a small supply of Percocet if you want that instead of ibuprofen?"

"Absolutely not," Sherlock muttered.

"Thought not," John said. "Come on, take these."

He put the pills in Sherlock's palm and the younger man took them, reaching vaguely for the glass, but John shook his head, raising it himself and titling it carefully against Sherlock's lips. Sherlock drained the glass, feeling dehydrated and sore, then leaned his head back, closing his eyes again.

"What happened?" he mumbled, concentrating on his breathing to help keep from concentrating on the pain in his head that seemed centered on the crown. He reached up, more slowly this time, and John didn't stop him. Gingerly, Sherlock touched the area that hurt the most and felt the pucker of stitched skin on his scalp, beneath his hair. At least they hadn't shaved any hair off, he realized.

"You were hit with a beer mug," John said.

Sherlock raised his head slightly, feeling off balance as he did so, as though his muscles were loose and unresponsive, and stared at John.

"Oh yes, very funny, John," he said, then bit his lip against a groan when John shifted on the bed.

"I'm not joking," John said, raising his eyebrows. "I know you don't remember, because I've explained this to you several times, and probably Sam did too, on the way to the hospital. I probably shouldn't waste my breath telling you again."

"I won't forget," Sherlock muttered darkly.

"Mmm-hmm," John agreed. "That's what you said all of last night, too."

"John!" Sherlock snapped, then winced at the ringing in his head this induced.

"All right, all right," John said and Sherlock gave him the best scowl he could muster without hurting his aching head all the more. "From what I understand, a couple of blokes started an argument about football that turned into an actual fight, which turned into more than a couple of blokes."

Sherlock stared at him.

"Are you suggesting I was in a _pub fight_?" he spat.

John laughed, but shook his head.

"No, I think just caught in the cross-fire. We were going to meet up with Sam for a pint after I got off work yesterday, but since we were running later hours, I was going to catch the two of you up. I was on my way, actually, when Sam rang me to tell me what had happened. It's all a bit disjointed, since you weren't precisely giving straight answers, between insisting on going home and playing matchmaker for Sam and Sandra –"

"What?" Sherlock demanded. John laughed again, brown eyes dancing.

"You remember Sandra Casey, one of the nurses you had after the crash?" Sherlock nodded gingerly. "Well, she was there last night, at the hospital, and you gave her Sam's card after he'd left and suggested in no uncertain terms that she ring him. I believe your exact reasoning to me, on the cab ride home was this:" he pressed his fisted hands together, then splayed his fingers quickly, pulling his hands apart, "Sparks!"

"I did not," Sherlock said.

John chuckled.

"You most certainly did. Then you subjected me to a ten-minute monologue about why stitching is an outdated and barbaric means of patching a person back up, when there are clearly more obvious choices for repairing damaged skin, like super glue. You even offered to remove your own stitches and show me."

Sherlock felt the top of his head again, very carefully, his fingertips brushing over the uneven ridges caused by small, neat stitches in his skin.

"I wouldn't have let you," John said. "I can tackle quite well, you know. And you were not exactly steady on your feet."

Sherlock didn't feel particularly steady right now. He had no memories of any of this. The last thing he recalled was reading through some files for Lestrade that afternoon – the previous afternoon now, it seemed. He did not like the idea that the greater part of a day had been snapped from his memory although he had moved through that time as per normal, and everyone he'd come into contact would remember, but he would not.

It was not a pleasant feeling.

"You'll be all right," John said, misreading his expression. "It may take a few days to feel your old self again, though."

Sherlock huffed. At least the ibuprofen was beginning to work. His headache seemed less clamorous now and John seemed more in focus.

"How long have I been sleeping?" he asked.

"Just over twelve hours," John said. "Do you think you could try getting up? You're in need of something to eat."

"I'm sure I can manage," Sherlock said and started to shuffle toward the edge of the bed, feeling irate that he was being treated like an invalid when all he'd taken was a knock on the head. He'd had worse.

" _Not_ without me!" John snapped and slid himself under one of Sherlock's arms, gripping his hand, snaking his other arm around Sherlock's waist. "And slowly, you great idiot. If you do it all at once, you'll only pass out."

Sherlock's lips twitched in distaste but he didn't seem to have the strength to fight against John's slow pace. He pushed himself carefully to his feet, aware that John was watching him intently. The pain in his head flared a moment, then receded again when he set him jaw against it.

Everything went white.

"Sit down now," John commanded and Sherlock's legs obeyed. John pushed him forward so that his head hung between his knees. Sherlock focused on breathing until the whiteness faded and disappeared. He didn't feel nauseous, he noted, and wondered if this was good. He only felt dizzy.

"I'm cold," he complained, realizing it suddenly.

"You're pretty badly dehydrated," John said. "Hang on. Please don't try and stand up."

He felt John move away for a minute, then return, helping him sit up gently, then wrapping him in his dressing gown.

"I don't want this," Sherlock scowled. "I want yours. It's warmer."

"You can't have mine. It's in the laundry."

"Then fetch it out. It's not dirty anyway, you just washed it earlier this week."

"Yes, and it was fine until you threw up all over it last night," John replied. "I'm washing it a second time now for good measure."

Sherlock stared at the floor in front of him.

"Oh," he said.

"Come on, let's try again."

In the end, John managed to get him to the couch, where he lay Sherlock down, put on his bunny slippers, covered him with several blankets and manoeuvred the telly so it was visible from where Sherlock was lying. He popped in some Doctor Who, which Sherlock normally enjoyed, but the plots seemed unnecessarily convoluted and strange. And the picture seemed too bright. Everything seemed too bright, even the overcast November day outside. He closed his eyes but the sound from the telly and the faint scent of an expensive cologne – Mycroft's – kept him from falling asleep again.

"When was Mycroft here?" he muttered when John came back, bearing a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal.

"Earlier this morning," John replied. "He stayed awhile, but got bored watching you sleep and I got tired of him solving my crosswords upside down and backwards."

"That's _my_ job," Sherlock said vaguely.

"Right," John said. "Come on, here you go." He passed off the mug and Sherlock took it, sipping it carefully. John pulled over a chair and was about to sit down when there was a knock on the door. Sherlock winced as the sound reverberated in his skull, making the headache, which had been fading, flare up again. John stood, putting the bowl down, and crossed the room to the door, opening it to admit Lestrade.

"John, give him the Percocet and tell him to go away," Sherlock muttered. "I've got nothing else illegal in the flat."

"I wouldn't believe that if you gave me a million quid," Lestrade commented, coming round the armchairs and evaluating Sherlock with his arms crossed, his blue eyes intent. Then he perched himself on the back of Sherlock's chair, which Sherlock found annoying.

"How about two?" Sherlock asked.

"Not even then. How's your head?"

"Hurts," Sherlock said shortly, sipping his tea. This, at least, was making him feel better. "You have a case for me?"

"Do I have– Do I have a _case_ for you, Sherlock? Are you sodding insane? You were hit on the head with a beer mug and you've got a concussion! No, I do _not_ have a case for you! Even if I did, I can't have a detective with a concussion on scene! Your judgement is impaired and you'd be a liability!"

"My judgement is just fine," Sherlock said. "If you don't have a case for me, why are you here?"

"Oh yes, far be it from me to be at all concerned that you took a well-aimed and quite heavy beer mug to the skull last night, hmm? Would you like to know how many officers it took to settle that brawl down? I can't even ask you what started it, since I doubt you'd remember, although from all the reports I've read – and believe me, I've read plenty today – it looks like you actually might be completely innocent here. No, I came to see if you wanted to press charges against the man who threw the glass and hit you."

Sherlock looked at Lestrade over the rim of his mug, which was slightly chipped, he noticed, and this was aggravating. Why didn't John take better care when doing the washing up?

"How can I press charges if I can't identify him?"

"Well, we have a few other witnesses and the man in question himself fessed up to it. He was quite upset, actually."

"Good," John said, with surprising venom in his voice.

"Unfortunately, not remorseful. He was angry he'd missed his actual target," Lestrade sighed. "He didn't quite seem to understand that hitting someone with a glass isn't a good idea, even if you're hitting the person you've meant to hit."

"I don't care," Sherlock replied. "John?"

"What do you think, Greg?"

"I don't think it matters – he was one of the key fighters, so he'll be looking at some charges anyway, and probably some minor time, or fines at very least, and maybe some community service. No one was seriously injured, thankfully, although there were some broken bones. Including one broken nose courtesy of our own Agent Mitchell."

John snorted, swallowing on laughter. Sherlock just wished Lestrade would leave. He was annoyed at having someone else in his space, especially when Lestrade insisted on talking about other people. It felt like his flat was filling up with strangers and he just wanted everyone to be gone but John.

"Then no," he said. Lestrade regarded him a moment, then nodded.

"Less paperwork for us, at any rate," he said. "But if you change your mind, let me know, because I'm sure I can come up with a few other creative charges to slap on him for you. That looks painful."

He nodded at the stitched cut that Sherlock could not, of course, see.

"It is," Sherlock replied shortly.

"All right, I'm off, you look like you could use some sleep anyhow. I'll ring in a few days, see how you're doing."

Sherlock managed a slow nod, to keep his head from hurting again, the headache having subsided to tolerable levels. John got up and let the DI out, then came back and picked up the bowl of cooling oatmeal, settling down and passing it to Sherlock.

"I don't want it. You do it." Sherlock grouched. John gave him a wry smile and shook his head.

"Feeling a bit out of sorts, aren't you?" he asked.

"No, I'm fine," Sherlock said.

"No, you're not," John replied easily. "You'll feel better with some food in you though. You'll be mood-swingy for a few days, Sherlock. It's normal."

"And that is not a word, John. Mood-swingy. I don't _get_ mood-swingy."

"No, not you, never," John agreed. Sherlock gave him a glare and snatched the bowl from him, eating the bland and sticky oatmeal slowly, not at all wanting to admit the heat and weight of it did help him feel slightly less lightheaded.

"Shut off the telly, it's too bright," Sherlock sighed, then passed the bowl back when he was done, shifting, sitting up more, moving to swing his legs over the side the couch, but John was there in an instant, a hand on Sherlock's chest, a warning look in his brown eyes.

"You need to rest."

"Boring. I have work to do."

"Not today you don't," John said.

"John, I'm bored, I don't want to lie about all day."

"You've been up less than an hour, that hardly counts as all day, and you have a concussion. Tell you what, we'll both lie about and do nothing all day, how does that sound?"

Sherlock considered this briefly, then sighed, but felt better.

"All right," he agreed. John helped him shift on the couch so they were lying together, Sherlock mostly stretched out across John, both of them bundled under the blankets. It was nicer, he thought, to lie there with John than it was to do so alone, tracing vague patterns on John's shirt, feeling the twitch of muscles when he accidentally brushed a ticklish spot. It was pleasant to drift back to sleep, listening to the sound of John's heart beating slowly and strongly, smelling the familiar scent of sunshine, feeling the warmth of John's body against his. More pleasant still to drift back awake sometime later and find that John had kept his promise and was still there, lying about with him all day and doing nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

The photograph shows two people, a man and a woman, lying back to back on an off-white area rug on top of pale laminate flooring, the woman facing an unmade queen-sized bed. The burgundy-and-gold duvet is visible in the photograph, almost touching the rug. They are bound together by silk scarves. They are positioned so that the tops of their heads are in the same place, although the man is seven centimetres taller than the woman. The scarves, which are all blue, bind them at the head, the chest, the waist, and the woman's ankles, which is mid-calf for the man.

The file indicates that they were moved after death, placed liked this once they had each been shot in the head. The bullet wounds have been fairly expertly cleaned so that there is little blood on the scarves binding their heads and chests. Rebecca Garrott, thirty-seven, was a local sculptor. Her husband, Christopher Garrot, owned a small but successful local bakery. Neither of them have any previous criminal records, nor have they any apparent enemies. Both were active members of the local artistic community and active volunteers for the area's animal rescue shelter. They were reported missing when the bakery failed to open Wednesday morning. The patrol officers who went to their house to check on them found them in their bedroom in the position shown in the photograph. The medical examiner estimates they died sometime between three and five pm on Tuesday afternoon.

The file also indicates no disturbance in the area, and none of the doors or windows have been forced, although the front door was unlocked, but shut when officers arrived. The male victim's brother indicated that they did not leave their doors unlocked, even when they were home. No suspicious or unidentified fingerprints were found at the scene. One neighbour reported hearing something that sounded like a shot, but initially mistook it as an older car backfiring. The female victim was shot in the bedroom, the male victim in the corridor just outside the bedroom.

Several suspects were identified and questioned by the police, including the female victim's younger brother, Darren Watson, who was arrested, but charges were never laid. As of October second, the case has officially gone cold.

* * *

(November)

"Checking up on me again?" Sherlock snapped when Mrs. Hudson pushed open the door to his flat.

"Now, Sherlock, you'll not get snippy with me," she admonished him, as though he was five and she was his mother. "You know John is just concerned for you. Cup of tea, dear?"

"John calls me once an hour," Sherlock said, holding up his phone as proof, ensuring he sounded irritated. And he was. But not at John. At the fact that it was the _only_ time of day for the last two days when he wasn't bored out of his still-smarting skull, when there was a moment, just a brief moment, when he had something to do that he _could_ do.

Concentrating on anything was still hard. He felt his thoughts skitter away when he tried to focus them, like tiny little mice fleeing from a prowling cat. Then he'd realize he had actually thought that sort of sentence, which would make the whole thing so much worse.

The low grade headache persisted even now, centered on the stitched wound on the crown of his skull, which ached all of the time, even though John assured him it was clean and not at all infected. John had cleaned it and stitched it himself, which Sherlock had certainly known, but couldn't remember. It frustrated him that he still couldn't remember anything from that day beyond the old case files he'd been going over for Lestrade.

It was more aggravating that people kept checking on him, as though he might spontaneously develop a second concussion if left to his own devices. The previous day, Monday, John had gone back into work at Sherlock's insistence, although Sherlock now regretted that he'd told John to do this. He missed John an irrationally large amount, and found it almost offensive that the doctor wasn't at home.

Tricia had come by Monday afternoon with Josephine to visit him, and Sherlock had accomplished nothing whatsoever except a nap with his niece, as if he were also fourteen months old and in need of regularly scheduled sleeping times. Mycroft had come Monday evening, but thankfully hadn't stayed for the supper to which John had invited him. Sam had come Sunday afternoon, with a bruise and graze on his left cheek and healing scrapes on his knuckles, and had filled Sherlock and John in as much as he could as to what had happened in the pub.

A bloody row over bloody football.

It was so _stupid_.

"Tea, Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson asked again and he realized he hadn't replied. He sighed from his position on the couch, wrapped in John's old bathrobe, which was clean now – he'd made John wash it a third time after being told he'd thrown up on it – then nodded.

"Yes, fine," he said, staring at his phone, willing the hour to run out, so he could talk to John again. But John had just rung ten minutes previous. He considered calling for a cab and going down to John's clinic just to sit in John's office all day, so at least he'd have some company when the doctor had brief moments between patients.

He was not entirely convinced of his ability to stay standing long enough to make it all the way down the stairs, out the door, and into a cab. Let alone from the cab, to John's building, up to the second floor, where the clinic was located. At least he could move around the flat now without the world going white and consciousness threatening to forcibly remove itself.

Mrs. Hudson puttered around the kitchen; Sherlock could hear her getting out mugs and the tea. He hoped John hadn't hidden the sugar again, as some means of distracting Sherlock, because the idea of pursuing that little game right didn't seem appealing, it seemed maddening. And Mrs. Hudson would never find it. Nor would she _understand_ why John had moved it, and Sherlock was not about to explain.

"Here you are, dear," she said, coming in a few minutes later with tea and some biscuits, which Sherlock didn't want to eat, but knew that, if he did not, she would tell John. This was so _tedious_. Why wouldn't his head just stop hurting and cooperate? He didn't care that John assured him this was what happened with a concussion and that all of the research he'd done online supported this. He wasn't other people. This should therefore not apply to him.

"Feeling better, are we?" she asked, perching on the couch beside his legs, which he shuffled over for her, patting him gently on the shin.

"I'm bored, Mrs. Hudson," he complained, sipping his tea.

"It's a good sign, love," she assured him. "Means you're on the mend."

"Bored, bored, bored," Sherlock said. "And John's hidden my gun."

"Good thing, too," Mrs. Hudson replied, iron suddenly in her voice. "I'll have no more damage to my walls or floors or ceilings, young man. You find other things to occupy your time. How about a nice puzzle?"

"There are no puzzles!" Sherlock snapped. "All the cases are so dull! Why won't someone do something _interesting_?"

"I mean a jigsaw puzzle, Sherlock."

He stared at her as though she may have gone mad.

"Sudoku?" she suggested. "Crosswords? John is always saying you finish his."

"No, no, no!" Sherlock moaned. "I don't want to do those things! I want–"

This headache to go away. This moodiness to cease. This inactivity to end.

"I'm sure something will come up," Mrs. Hudson assured him. "It always does. The darkest hour is just before dawn, as they say."

"What?" Sherlock demanded. "What? Who says that? Patently untrue! By necessity it gets lighter in the hour immediately before dawn! The darkest hour has to be precisely in the middle of the night, when we're at the furthest point from facing the sun!"

Mrs. Hudson gave him one of her patient, motherly looks.

"It's just an expression, dear," she said. "No need to be excited about it."

"It's a stupid expression," Sherlock countered, then sighed. "I have seen more than my fair share of dawns, you know."

"I know," Mrs. Hudson said, leaning forward somewhat. "Despite my hearing, I can still hear you on the stairs when you come and go."

"I don't mean to wake you," Sherlock said.

She shrugged, as if this were not important.

"I'm a retired old lady, Sherlock. I have nowhere to be in the mornings that prevents me from lying in. And it's nice to know you're keeping us all from being murdered in our beds."

Sherlock's phone buzzed and he frowned, fumbling under the blankets for it, annoyed that he'd put it down when taking the tea. Mrs. Hudson pushed herself to her feet and patted his knee as Sherlock searched madly, trying not to spill his tea at the same time.

"Perhaps there's been a nice murder," she said, directly contradicting her last statement about Sherlock's apparent ability to keep people from being killed.

"I should be so lucky," Sherlock snorted and she shook her head at him, leaving. He finally unearthed the phone and checked the name on the text message, mildly disappointed that it wasn't from John, even though he still had forty-two minutes until the next check-in. Instead, it was from Sam, and he wondered if perhaps Interpol might have a sudden need for his services. He clicked open the message.

_Everyone else I know would have balked at giving a stranger my number and insisting that she ring me. Nice to be treated as a normal bloke sometimes._

Sherlock set his mug on the floor to free up his left hand.

_That's because everyone else you know are idiots. Except John. SH_ , he sent back, feeling the need to uphold John's intellectual honour. He was the only person allowed to impugn John's intelligence.

_Could be,_ Sam agreed. _Anyhow, thank you. Meeting her Friday._

Sherlock scowled at his phone.

_Friday? Why Friday? Why not earlier? SH._

_Because I'm in Lyon for work until Thursday._

_What? Why Lyon? SH._

_Work. Interpol. What do you think the "Inter" stands for? Must dash – meetings. Hope your head is better. Will ring again after I get back. Cheers._

Sherlock stared at his phone and sighed before slipping it into the pocket of his bathrobe and pushing himself up. The silence weighed down on him as he rescued his tea mug from the floor and padded into the kitchen, finishing it and putting the empty cup in the sink. He felt the boredom creeping back in, like a damp mist.

Everyone had somewhere to be, something to do. John, his patients. Tricia, _her_ patients. Sam, his Interpol meetings. Mycroft, his – whatever Mycroft was doing this week. Even Mrs. Hudson had her crap daytime telly, which Sherlock didn't have the attention span for at the moment, and her bridge club.

He moved aimlessly about the flat, tried once to play his violin and gave it up as a bad job, then finally decided to shower – carefully, given the healing wound on his head – and dress and leave. If he collapsed on the sidewalk, so be it. Some handy passerby would probably call an ambulance.

Outside it was chilly, November almost halfway past, but the sky was a bright blue today, sharper in the cold air. No rain, no snow, not even wispy white clouds to interrupt the early winter sunshine. Sherlock bundled his hands into his pockets, noticing that his headache felt better in the fresh air, and wished he'd thought to try this two days previous instead of just now.

He walked slowly, keeping track of the other pedestrians around him and the traffic as much as he was able. He could tell his reactions were still slowed, which was maddening. He wasn't used to having to concentrate quite so much; it was a good deal more work than he imagined it would be. No wonder people of lesser intelligence ignored so much. It would be exhausting to keep this up, but then he reminded himself it could be learned, to a certain extent. Police officers did so all the time, with varying degrees of success.

He found himself at Angelo's and let himself in. The restaurant was fairly quiet, since it was early afternoon, but past the lunch rush. A young woman, about twenty, was sitting by herself in a booth, headphones in, dyed red hair pulled messily from her face, drawing absently in a sketchbook with her left hand, a scatter of charcoals and coloured pencils spread out around her, and a cold and almost untouched cup of tea next to her right elbow. An elderly couple, a man and a woman, was at a nearby table, speaking quietly, but with smiles and bright eyes and gentle laughter. Sherlock studied them a moment – they had clearly been together for quite some time and were comfortable with each other, but appreciated one another enough that they were not taking the other for granted. They were still together for the joy of it, not for fear of being alone.

It made him miss John and feel strangely nostalgic for things that had not even happened yet, and he found himself hoping Angelo's, or something close to, would still be here when he and John were that age and wanted to sit and talk and laugh quietly.

"Sherlock!"

His musings were interrupted when the bear of a man swept him into a rib-crushing hug and Sherlock grunted, caught with a momentary wave of dizziness. Angelo released him and clapped him on the shoulder, grinning broadly, and Sherlock forced his face into a smile but Angelo frowned.

"Concussion," Sherlock said shortly.

The ex-con raised his eyebrows.

"Long story," Sherlock sighed, waving the questions away, settling into his preferred seat by the window, looking out onto the street. He was not about to get into the particulars about how he'd been involved but not really in a bar fight. And he was still not entirely certain that John and Sam and Lestrade weren't having a good go at him.

"Coffee's on the house, then," Angelo said.

"Not necessary,"

The larger man brushed this off.

"I pay a pittance for it, and you always say it's swill anyway. Anything else?"

"That's because it _is_ swill. No, just the coffee, thank you."

He sat, sipping his coffee, and listened to the conversation behind him without really registering the words, and to the scratch of the charcoals and colours on the young woman's paper. She hummed to herself occasionally, without noticing.

The door opening made him look up and a young man came in, late twenties or early thirties, wrapped in a navy overcoat and matching scarf, carrying a cello case. He glanced around and settled into a table near Sherlock, nodding at him. Sherlock nodded back, then evaluated the instrument case. The man was obviously a professional – the case was high quality, well cared for, although old with some scratches, but he carried it easily and was more than used to its weight and size.

"You play?" the younger man asked.

"Violin," Sherlock replied.

"Ah," the man said, grinning, his brown eyes lighting up. "Too bad you don't have it with you, we could have had a small, impromptu concerto."

Sherlock only raised his eyebrows as Angelo brought the man some coffee.

"How about it?" he asked, glancing at Sherlock, giving him a wink. "I could start booking you, regular."

"Steady gigs, shouldn't pass that up," the younger man said, nodding thanks for the coffee, his smile bright. He shed his coat and scarf and rubbed his hands together. "Brr."

"I don't play for an audience," Sherlock replied coolly. Not an audience that wasn't John or Josephine anyway.

" _Everyone_ plays for an audience," the younger man said, shaking out two packets of sugar and ripping them open cleanly. "Even if you're the only one listening. Still an audience."

"Then I play for quite a select audience," Sherlock replied, sipping his coffee again. The younger man laughed, nodding.

"Well, to each his own," he said, pouring two creamers into his coffee as well, then stirring it all together. "Don't suppose you'd let me play for my coffee?" he asked Angelo, who was still hovering.

"If you're any good, you have a deal."

"Let me warm my hands up," the younger man said with a smile. He took a few minutes to do so, sipping his coffee, and Sherlock turned back to the window, watching the street and the pedestrians. The younger man took out his instrument and tuned it. Sherlock turned back when the tuning was almost complete and waited.

The girl had pulled out her earphones and was watching intently and the older couple had their eyes turned toward the cellist as well, holding hands across the table. Sherlock kept sipping his coffee, which Angelo had refilled for him, and the younger man drew his bow across the cello's strings, a clear note following in the wake of his movement.

He played something with which Sherlock was unfamiliar, but it was haunting in its slow beauty. It made him miss John all the more, wishing his husband was there, instead of at work, so they could sit next to each other like the older couple was doing now. He heard hints of rain and sorrow, timbers of love and loss. The bright blue November sky outside seemed forgotten, and the world shrunk to the inside of the small restaurant, then was carried away on mournful notes, so that everything that was important suddenly seemed distant, unobtainable.

When the younger man finished, silence flowed in as the last note died away and the audience was still for a moment, then the older woman clasped her hands above her head and gasped, but there was a smile in her tone. The younger man glanced at her and she blinked, eyes bright.

"That was lovely," she said. He bowed easily from his chair, obviously used to playing and accepting praise from seated behind his instrument.

"And my coffee?" he asked.

"On the house whenever you come back," Angelo promised.

"I could take one to go," the younger man said. "I do have a gig tonight, in the area."

"You got it," Angelo said, and disappeared. The younger man glanced at Sherlock.

"And from my fellow strings musician?"

"It was lonely," Sherlock said.

The younger man laughed, nodding.

"Well, we all get lonely sometimes," he replied. "It was the first real piece of music my mother taught me. Said it made her think of home."

He began packing away his instrument and the young woman popped up from her booth, unceremoniously dropping a sheet of sketch paper on the table, but taking care not to get it in the condensation rings left the coffee mug. Sherlock had noted her working while the man had been playing and caught a glimpse of a brief sketch, a moment of music captured in colour, the scene faded away around the young man so that he and his cello shone.

"Thanks," she said, flashing him a grin.

"And you," he replied, before she returned to her own work. Sherlock pulled a twenty pound note from his wallet and offered it over.

"Too much like busking?" he enquired.

"I've done my share of that. A starving musician never says no. Cheers."

He packed up and accepted a take away coffee from Angelo, with another guarantee for coffee on the house if he chose to come back. The young man laughed, thanked them all again for listening, and left, letting in a gust of cold November air as the door opened behind him.

The moment of fresh air seemed to reorient him and Sherlock checked his phone. He had missed a text from John and replied quickly that he was fine. He paid Angelo for the coffee – he never actually left without paying, even when Angelo insisted that he did not have to – and stepped onto the street, hailing a cab. It may still be early, but he was damned if he was going home to sit alone after that, when he could at least sit in John's office and see his husband between patients and not feel completely and utterly bored.


	4. Chapter 4

The photograph shows two people, a man and a woman, lying back to back on an off-white carpet splattered with blood, the man facing an off-white Italian leather sofa. They are bound together by silk scarves. They are positioned so that the tops of their heads are in the same place, although the man is fifteen centimetres taller than the woman. The scarves, which are all blue, bind them at the head, the chest, the waist, and the woman's ankles, which is almost at the knees for the man.

The file indicates that they were moved, although not far, after death, placed liked this once they had each been shot in the head. The bullet wounds have been fairly expertly cleaned so that there is little blood on the scarves binding their heads and chests. Tarik Aswad, thirty, was a real-estate lawyer. His wife, Sara Clayworth, thirty-one, was a set designer for a small, local theatre group. Neither of them have any previous criminal records, nor have they any apparent enemies. Both were well-liked among their friends and active fans of their local music scene. They were reported missing when the Aswad failed to meet a client Saturday morning and could not be reached by phone. The patrol officers who went to their house to check on them found them in their sound-proofed multimedia room in the position shown in the photograph. The medical examiner estimates they died sometime between seven and ten pm Friday night.

The file also indicates no disturbance in the area, and none of the doors or windows have been forced, although the front door was unlocked, but shut when officers arrived. The victims' downstairs neighbour and friend indicated that they did not leave their doors unlocked, even when they were home. No suspicious or unidentified fingerprints were found at the scene. Because both shots were fired from the sound-proofed room, none of the neighbours reported hearing gunfire. The male victim was shot in the multi-media room, the female victim just inside its doorway.

* * *

At least he'd been roused at a decent hour, Greg Lestrade thought as he stepped out of his car and flashed his badge to be admitted to the scene. The constable guarding the cordoned off area lifted the tape for him and Lestrade ducked under it, his breath condensing around him in the cold November morning air. The constable looked cold himself, rubbing his gloved hands together, cheeks and nose pink.

Sally Donovan met him on the steps going up to the small flat, her curly dark hair pulled back from her face, her badge glinting from its chain against the black wool of her overcoat. She nodded good morning, although Lestrade privately thought it was not a good morning for some. He eyed the small crowd of people who were watching unhappily or with shock and rage – other tenants, who had probably known the victims.

"What have we got?" he asked, following her into the flat, accepting a pair of latex gloves she passed off to him.

"Tarik Aswad, thirty, and Sara Clayworth, thirty-one, both shot in the head and tied up, sometime last night, looks like. No one heard anything, but not surprising, since they had one of those kitted out sound-proofed multi-media rooms with the flat-screen and surround sound."

"Brilliant," Lestrade sighed and turned back to the street, visible just on the other side of the dark brown door. Slightly fogged glass windows ran along both sides of the door and across the top, letting in weak winter light. "Any cameras in the area that would help us out?"

"We're checking, but don't hold your breath," Donovan said.

"Never do. Anyone report anything unusual?"

"Nope. The tenants here are all young, mid-thirties at best, and there are only seven flats in the building. Most of them were either at work or out, and the two that were home were on the top floor, so wouldn't have heard anyone coming or going."

"Set up a canvas of the neighbourhood."

"Already on it," Donovan said and he nodded his thanks, casting an expert eye at the door, then crouching to check the locks and deadbolt.

"Not forced," he said.

"No, no signs of a break-in anywhere," Donovan said. "Forensics is searching all of the windows in the building, especially the ones accessible from the ground floor or fire escapes, but nothing yet."

Lestrade considered this with another sigh, looking back out at the street, where the police cars with their flashing lights and the yellow crime scene tape made a barrier around them. He felt less like it was keeping people out of his crime scene and more as if it was keeping him trapped in the madness.

"Right, show me where," he said.

She took him up to the second storey and into one of the two flats on that floor. The place was already crawling with forensics, including Anderson, who only nodded at him and Donovan from the middle of a conversation with two of his techs. The curt gesture suggested that once again, he and Donovan were on the outs, and he wished the sergeant would just break it off altogether. She was a very competent officer, but terrible at making personal choices, as far as he was concerned.

She led him through the flat, which was decorated quite minimally, all smooth lines and stark colours, mostly whites, with vivid and shocking splashes of colour here and there – two navy blue throw pillows on the white loveseat in the living room, a painting done in swirls of reds and violets on the wall, a vase filled with red roses in the centre of the glass kitchen table. The flat was quite large, as flats in this area went, and Lestrade was not surprised to see a small home office, the only cluttered room in the whole place, as well as a small spare bedroom, furnished with the same minimalist taste, only a bit more colour, as if everything that was extra had ended up in there, which was probably the case.

The sound-proofed room, which was beside the master bedroom, was even more sparse, with a single, off-white Italian leather sofa resting on thick off-white carpet, a small end table on either side. There was an empty wine glass still on one of the tables, and another knocked almost casually on the floor, but neither glass looked as though it had had anything in it. No red marks at the bottom of the glasses, so white wine, most likely.

The couple was still where they'd died – no, where they'd been placed after they died, Lestrade thought, noting the blood splatter in the corridor opposite the entry to this room. One of them had been shot from inside the room while standing in the doorway. Based on the blood on the walls and carpet, the other had been shot here.

And then tied up, with blue scarves, back-to-back.

He frowned, crouching down beside the woman, who was facing the wall with the mounted flat-screen telly on it.

Something was elbowing at his mind.

He looked at her carefully, then stood, shucking his coat and passing it to Donovan without looking, knowing she'd take it. When he felt the weight transfer to her hands, he crouched down again, undoing the buttons at the wrist of his light blue dress shirt and pushing the sleeve up a bit. Lestrade ran his wrist carefully over the scarf binding the victims' heads and frowned.

_Shit_ , he thought to himself, checking their wounds.

Carefully cleaned. The silk was blood stained, of course, but not as much as it would be otherwise.

"Seen this before?" Donovan asked, surprise in her voice, almost correctly gauging his facial expression.

"No. Heard of it." He pushed himself to his feet, gesturing for his coat again and she passed it back. Lestrade fished out his phone and dug through his extensive list of contacts, reminding himself once again that he'd need to clear it out or organize it in some manner one of these days. When he had some free time.

Finding what he was looking for, he rang the number in Sheffield. A voice picked up after the third ring.

"Collins."

"Jeff? It's Greg Lestrade, down in London."

There was a pause, of surprise, not lack of recognition.

"Greg, hello. What can I do for you?"

"You had a case early this year where two victims were murdered in their home and tied up with scarves, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. February. Hang on, let me pull up the date. Yeah, the fifteenth February, I remember. Went cold in April, though. We never made any arrests. Why?"

"Heard anything about any others like this?"

There was another pause, this one of calculating realization.

"No, not in Sheffield. You have one in London."

"I think so," Lestrade sighed. "Let me send you a photo. One minute."

He turned on his phone's camera and snapped a picture carefully, then appended it to a text message and sent it to the DI in Sheffield. His then nine-year-old son had very patiently taught him, several years ago, how to do this, and it now seemed like habit. A very useful habit.

He waited, then heard a sigh and a quiet curse.

"Yes, almost exactly the same. Only in ours, the scarf round their heads was green, not blue. What fabric is it?"

"Silk."

"High quality?"

"I can't tell."

"A hundred quid says it is. High thread count and fine stitching. That's what our guy used."

"Blast," Lestrade said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb. "All right, we'll need all your files, of course. And you can have what information we have, as it comes to us."

"Either this guy's taken an extended break between February and he's planning more, or there are dots between here and there."

"I was thinking the same," Lestrade said. "This can't be a coincidence."

"Any signs of forced entry?"

"None."

"Not a coincidence then. Whoever he is, he either knows these people or is a master locksmith."

"Or talked his way in."

"Or talked his way in," Collins agreed.

"Let me run this down," Lestrade said. "I'll be in touch."

"I'll make sure everything gets your way by this afternoon."

Lestrade rung off and met Donovan's gaze. She arched her eyebrows at him.

"Go find out if there's any more that fits this pattern," he said. He had that familiar sinking feeling that came with knowing there was a lot more going on than was immediately apparent, and that a long day was going to be transformed quite quickly into a very long week.

* * *

In a way, John was relieved. He knew he shouldn't be, that it was not entirely appropriate, but feeling guilty about it wasn't going to stop murders from happening, wasn't going to bring these two back to life.

Sherlock had become worse as the week had gone on, paradoxically because his head injury was getting better. John had seen this sort of thing plenty of times before, in Afghanistan. Concussions could be minor, but their effects could be persistent, and he'd had to deal with his fair share of young men and women who felt grouchy and disoriented long after their headaches had abated. At least soldiers could be placed on light duty to occupy their time, though. There was no such thing as light duty for Sherlock. It was either full on Sherlock, or utter boredom.

Though, admittedly, Sherlock was much better than he had been when John at first knowing him at dealing with boredom, by launching himself into experiments or going up to the lab to mess about with a corpse, if Amanda had something for him, or even resorting to harassing someone who wasn't John for attention. Since Sherlock didn't get bored with Josephine, and Tricia enjoyed having company and someone else to entertain her daughter, Sherlock now often turned to that when desperate. It concerned John vaguely that Josephine might grow up to be very strange, but there seemed to be nothing he could to do stop it, and Tricia and Henry didn't appear to worry about it.

But still, there was nothing better than a case for Sherlock, particularly since his attention span had been about the same as Josephine's this week and he couldn't focus on something long enough to snap himself out of the boredom. John understood that, too; concussions were finicky things when it came to effects on both mood and concentration.

The case seemed to work.

Sherlock was letting him examine the bodies first, but practically vibrating with excitement, like a humming bird. John crouched down, trying to ignore this, feeling somewhat constrained by the blue forensics suit that he wore. Sherlock had brushed off any suggestion to do the same, of course, and John was certain this was entirely so he could start a row with Anderson. Even with a case in front of him, he couldn't resist.

They had both been shot, but the killer had taken the time to clean the wounds, which John found strange. He checked their pupils and the whites of their eyes, their hands, particularly their fingernails, which were now going blue, of course, and sniffed them carefully, especially the hair and near the mouth. He could smell the faint trace of alcohol, but given the wine glasses in the room, that wasn't surprising.

"I'd say they've been dead about twelve, maybe fifteen hours," John said, straightening back up, but remaining in his crouched position. "I don't think they were drunk when they died – not enough smell of alcohol. Not much of a stretch to say it was the shots that killed them."

Lestrade arched his eyebrows at that. John pushed himself fully to his feet and let Sherlock take over.

"Where are the other cases, Lestrade?" he asked, grinning as he crouched down next to the bodies, balancing himself easily. John glanced at him, then at Lestrade, who mirrored his surprise.

"We only know of one so far, in Sheffield. From February. Same MO, a couple shot in the head and bound with scarves," Lestrade replied.

"This can't have been his first murder, not by a long ways," Sherlock said. "It's too well organized; he wasn't rushed. The wounds were cleaned – you'll find towels missing, I'm sure, but probably dumped out back, because he wouldn't want to take them very far and probably doesn't care if they're found. The whole point is that they be found, of course. Otherwise, why go to all this trouble? This kind of staging – he was trying to send a message."

"What message?" Lestrade sighed.

"Don't know," Sherlock said shortly. "Personal? Professional? I'll need details of the other case to make sure, to find the connection between the victims. But look at this, the way they're bound. There's no twisting in the scarves except at the knots; everything is smooth, folded, perfect. He was taking his time because he knew he had time. He knew what he was doing, he had a means of getting out easily should he be interrupted, but he wasn't worried about that, I think. And he wasn't concerned about cleaning up anything but them, so it's not a crime he wants to cover up. It's something he wants us to _see._ "

Sherlock glanced around the room quickly and John made a mental note when the detective caught his balance with the tips of the fingers. That was another dizzy spell, one that no one else would notice, and which Sherlock would be irritated that John had recognized. But Sherlock was too steady on his feet to need to catch himself like that, and John had seen him doing it most of the week: a hand on the wall, usually, but also passing behind his armchair, or on the banister going up the stairs to the flat, or lingering on a door knob. It cleared fairly quickly and his eyes never lost their sharpness, which was a good sign.

"He had to have broken in, somehow," Sherlock continued after the almost imperceptible moment had passed. "Look at the patterns of the shots," he indicated the blood splatter in the white sound-proofed room, then in the corridor, pushing himself to his feet – John kept a sharp eye on that, but there was no unsteadiness – and stepped back, angling himself slightly with a frown on his face.

"Yes, from here, he could make one shot," he aimed a pointed finger and cocked thumb at the leather sofa, "And then a second," he aimed at the doorway, "Without moving. Look at the expression on Aswad's face, he was caught by surprise. So he got in, came in here, shot him, and she heard the shot and came running from the bedroom."

"How do you know he didn't force her to let him in?" Anderson snapped, showing up in the doorway. John fought the urge to roll his eyes and wondered if animosity could be like a magnetic attraction. The two of them could not seem to stay away from antagonizing one another whenever possible.

"He would have had to let her go to step in here and Aswad only looks surprised, not frightened or angry. She, on the other hand, does look frightened and angry."

"How do you know she's come from the bedroom?" Lestrade asked.

"Look at her shirt. She's wearing thin cotton trousers, but a fitted blouse. Half changed from a day at work, whereas he hadn't bothered to change, so he was waiting in here, although they must have had the wine before she decided to change. So she was relaxed, done with her workday, and had already begun to wind down from it. All the buttons are done up in the front, except the one right at her neck, which women never do up anyway, but the buttons are her wrist are undone, so she was about to take the shirt off, and she was very careful with her clothing." He paused, frowning. "Even if it isn't that high of quality."

John repressed a snort. Like Sherlock's intellect, his taste in clothing was keen and honed, and he viewed the way others dressed in much the same way as he viewed their intellectual capabilities, as clearly inferior to him. Although he often had comments about John's lack of deductive capabilities, he never complained about the way John dressed. John often felt that Sherlock had created a small mental blind spot when it came to John, in which he could fairly safely exist and not be the subject of too much scorn.

"Have you found their personal effects, wallets, phones, laptops?"

Lestrade cast a look at Anderson, who nodded, still glowering.

"Nothing looks like it's been disturbed," the forensics officer said.

"John, come with me," Sherlock said, breezing out of the room, past Anderson, John in reluctant tow. The consulting detective made a tour of the flat, getting in the way of some of the forensics techs and other officers but not others. John noticed that this was because some of them got out of Sherlock's path and others remained obstinately where they were – it was almost as though there were invisible battle lines drawn here. Between whom? Anderson and Sherlock? Anderson and Donovan? When she and Anderson were on the outs, she was always much more tolerable to Sherlock.

"Well," Sherlock said, coming back into the media room. "I won't soon forget this day."

"Why?" Anderson scowled at him.

"Nothing's been disturbed: you were right. But I suppose there is a first time for everything." Anderson opened his mouth to retort but Sherlock kept speaking as thought he hadn't noticed, which John knew full well he had. "So this wasn't about something they had the killer wanted, it was about wanting them dead. But why?"

"Good question," Lestrade said. "As far as we can tell, they didn't have any enemies."

"Everyone has enemies," Sherlock mused, looking down at the bodies. "Although most people do not have enemies who are willing or able to murder them. And it's quite clear these two had at least one enemy, or else we'd not be here."

John repressed a sigh; Sherlock was right, but years worth of trying to educate him about tact had been wasted. He never saw the point, especially when it came to murder victims. He'd argued with John on more than one occasion that the dead were dead and couldn't possibly care what he, or anyone else, thought of them by that point. John supposed this was true, although a bit harsh.

"The real question is what enemy did these two share with the couple in Sheffield?" Sherlock said, half to himself, contemplating the corpses again. "I'll need everything you have on that, as well. And the scarves themselves, from their evidence impound."

"Why are they important?" Lestrade asked.

"Absolutely no idea," Sherlock replied. "Perhaps he just likes scarves. Any word on the possibility of other murders like this one?"

"I've been talking to you almost this whole time –" Lestrade started, but was interrupted by Sally Donovan returning, poking her head into the room, pointedly ignoring Anderson.

"Yes," she said, and John knew things must be bad between her and Anderson, because she didn't even so much as give Sherlock a cursory glare. "Two more in the intervening time. One in Codnor on June twentieth and another in Bicester on September ninth."

At this, amidst Lestrade's frown and Anderson's pinched expression and the sinking feeling in John's stomach, Sherlock grinned.


	5. Chapter 5

The flat had been transformed into a makeshift evidence impound and John had to watch where he stepped, and despaired of any available surfaces. He had to shift through files just to find his laptop, and this simple search had earned him a pretty severe reprimand about destroying some mysterious system Sherlock had set out for himself. When John had pointed out that there seemed to be no pattern to the way things were laid out, he'd apparently warranted a you're-an-idiot glare, which Sherlock usually didn't reserve for him, and then John had listened to a muttered diatribe about how John really couldn't be expected to understand genius when it was at work and that _he_ never upset John's things. This latter bit was largely true, if only because John didn't make messes like this.

"Where are you going?" Sherlock snapped at him when John tried to take himself upstairs, to get out of the detective's way. He understood the grouching had nothing to do with him personally, that Sherlock was trying to concentrate after a week's dry spell, both in terms of cases and not feeling at all himself. It was part of the high sometimes, John knew, but it probably also meant Sherlock was trying very hard not to be distracted by John's presence.

"Thought you might need some space to work," John said.

"You're not going anywhere," Sherlock informed him. "I need you."

"What do you need me to do to?" John asked. He'd examined the bodies at the scene, and looked over the photographs in the electronic files sent from the Sheffield police department. They were still waiting on files, both electronic and paper, from the other two cases, as well as the physical evidence from the first three. But there wasn't much he could do as a doctor with photographs that the medical examiners on the other cases hadn't already done.

"Sit," Sherlock said, pointing at John's chair, which he liberated from under a map of England that had been draped over it. John sat down, bemused, as Sherlock glanced about the flat, then found some pushpins from the kitchen and tacked the map to the wall. He stood in front of him for a few minutes, glaring at it as though it would shout answers at him if he just gave it a stern enough look, then turned back to John.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what, Sherlock?" John asked in reply.

"Are you just going to sit there?"

"You're the one who told me to sit here," John pointed out.

Sherlock huffed at him and picked up a book from the coffee table, one that John had been reading, and tossed it at him.

"How do you expect me to work when you're sitting there staring inanely at me?" he snapped.

"I _was_ going to go upstairs and leave you be," John pointed out.

"No, you need to stay down here," Sherlock insisted. John raised his eyebrows but didn't get a reply, so he sighed and opened his book to the marked page, curling up into the chair. Sherlock gave him a look that was an unlikely mixture of pleased and disapproving, then plopped himself down at the table, opening several files and spreading them out in front of him. John cast a quick eye over the top his book, but Sherlock was concentrating on the files now.

Some time later, the buzzer distracted both of them and John hurried downstairs to admit the police officers who came bearing boxes of files, directing them up to the flat. Sherlock ignored them altogether and John had them put the boxes down next to the table. He was surprised how quickly this had happened, and wondered how many people were now working on this, and what it meant that Greg Lestrade had got them access to the actual evidence so soon.

He thanked the officers who were acting as couriers and they left. John followed them downstairs, locking the door behind them, then returned to the flat, absently but curiously pulling up the lid on the top box, peering inside.

Sherlock was beside him in a flash, pushing the lid back down and steering John back toward his chair, settling him into it. John gave up, picking up his book again, and turning back to it. He didn't quite think it was fair that Sherlock immediately opened one of the evidence boxes and began pulling out more files, as well as actual physical evidence. But he kept that to himself, because this was, after all, Sherlock's job.

The consulting detective buzzed about the flat, setting things out, rifling through papers, pulling out photos and affixing them to the mirror, scribbling things down on sheets of paper that soon turned into small piles of their own. He pulled out his violin at one point and John knew better than to move or speak then, and kept reading. He was playing something with which John was not familiar, but cut himself off in mid-note, carefully putting the instrument away – he never failed to do this, no matter how distracted he was – and stationed himself in front of the mirror, eyes darting over something.

John pushed himself up then, padding into the kitchen, and filled the kettle, plugging it in and getting out the tea supplies from the cupboard, fishing about for his favourite mug, which had been buried in the back when Sherlock had haphazardly put away the dishes the night before.

He started when he turned, because Sherlock standing right behind him, moving in that eerily silent way he could do, when he wanted to.

"I need a pen," he said.

John swallowed on the sudden jump of his heart at being taken off guard and shook his head.

"Then why don't you get one?" he asked.

"You know where they are," Sherlock replied. John sighed, but it was no use pointing out that Sherlock also knew full well where the pens were. He went back into the living room and rooted around a small drawer, pulling one out, passing it over his shoulder.

"No, a felt-tip pen," Sherlock said. John sighed again and found a Sharpie and gave it to his husband, who snatched it, then snagged the shoulder of John's shirt, dragging him to the map that was pinned to the wall. He positioned John beside him – John had long grown used to Sherlock's tendency to manipulate him bodily while working – and then frowned again at the map, making four quick circles on it.

"Sheffield, Codnor, Bicester, and London," he said, tapping the pen against his lips. "What about them?"

"Moving south," John said.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. "But from where? And why?" He moved quickly, drawing a line down the M1 from near Sheffield to London.

"Bicester is closer to the M40," John pointed out.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed, then tapped the pen to his lips again, wrong end up, absently and unknowingly leaving a small black mark on the middle of his bottom lip that made John smile. "What if it's not south then? What if it's north? What if London is the base?"

"Then what?" John asked. "What does that tell us?"

"Nothing it wouldn't the other way, except perhaps that he lives here," Sherlock replied.

"Doesn't really narrow it down," John said.

"No," Sherlock agreed, slitting his eyes at the map, catching his lower lip between his teeth for a moment. John had the impulse to wipe away the black mark with his own lips, but knew Sherlock wouldn't appreciate that right now, since it would derail his train of thought.

Sherlock handed the pen back to John and pulled four of the grim photographs from the mirror, taping them to the map next to their respective locations.

"Why green?" Sherlock asked.

"Sorry?"

"Why the green scarf? All the others are blue, why is this one green?" he pointed to the picture of the first couple.

"Maybe that's all he had on him?"

"No, no, no," Sherlock said, casting John a dry look. "Think, John! This was planned – all of these were staged to look precisely the same, or almost precisely the same! This is not an inexperienced killer! This one," he jabbed a long finger at the photo from the Sheffield case, "Is in no way his first killing, maybe just the first with this pattern."

"Why would he pick up a new pattern?" John asked.

"He's getting bolder. He's a serial killer. He's been doing this for some time, I'd say at least a decade, since he's so comfortable with it. He's changing his routine – he wants something new."

_He's bored_ , John thought, feeling a chill go down his spine. He'd had his fill of bored killers with Moriarty.

"No," Sherlock said without at all looking at him or indicating how he'd noted the repressed shiver. "Because he's not getting sloppy. He wants to be noticed, but this isn't boredom. It's something else. He's after something."

"What?" John sighed rhetorically.

"Don't know," Sherlock replied, shortly.

"You said he's not getting sloppy, but look, the second couple, the man was shot in the chest. All of the others were shot in the head."

Sherlock nodded. John knew that he had already noted this.

"Can't control for everything, although he's doing a fine job at managing almost every variable. The victim tried to defend himself or his wife, perhaps. He's not deviating from the pattern because he wants to, but out of necessity. He's gone back to it in all of the others. He was accounting for the unexpected, and he did it right. How many people do you know who can make a chest shot that accurate?"

"Um, well, quite a lot," John replied.

Sherlock glanced at him, then flashed him a quick smile, the black Sharpie dot still on his lips.

"Ha, yes, of course," he said. John sighed and licked his thumb, holding it up.

"You've got pen on your lip," he said and Sherlock suffered him wiping it off, or at least rubbing it out enough it wasn't immediately noticeable, but then it looked more like a bruise. John sighed, unable to determine which was better. It would probably fade by the morning though, given Sherlock's tendency to chew on his lower lip while working.

"Yes, yes," his husband said, losing his patience and batting John's hand away. "Most people do not know a lot of shooters who could make that shot. Right where the heart is, not where they think the heart should be."

"So, what? A cop? A soldier?"

"Or just practiced," Sherlock replied. "He's a serial killer, John. Very likely a psychopath."

"Oh, lovely," John sighed, crossing his arms.

"Well, most serial killers are. It's not really a hobby picked up by the majority of the population."

"True," John said. Sherlock stepped toward the map and John realized his tea water had probably boiled by now. He went back into the kitchen and checked to make sure it was still hot enough, then filled a mug and dropped his tea bag in.

"Tea, Sherlock?" he called.

When he received no reply, he fixed a second cup for good measure and gave it to Sherlock, who took it and held it while still studying the map, then kept hold of it when he crossed the room to examine the rest of the photos affixed to the mirror, but did not drink it. John wasn't really surprised, and settled himself back into his chair, to wait to have ideas bounced off of him again.

He drank his own tea and read, and the afternoon faded into evening. John reheated some leftovers for himself, then pointedly left a plate for Sherlock, who had immersed himself in the files and surrounded himself with scrawled notes. Sherlock ate a single bite of the reheated pasta, made a face, then shoved it aside, nearly tipping it onto the floor. John rescued it quickly and binned it, not wanting to reheat it a second time. He fought a losing battle with Sherlock's tendency not to eat while working, although if it got really dire, and a case dragged on too long, he could usually convince the detective that a small meal would be better than collapsing due to low blood sugar.

He did the washing up and left the dishes in the drainer with no hope whatsoever that Sherlock would take the hint and replace them once they'd dried. John returned to the living room to find Sherlock pacing, twitching his fingers the way he did when he was playing the violin in his mind. As though realizing that he was doing this when John noticed it, he got out his violin again and the flat was filled with music once more.

John vaguely wanted to remove himself, maybe ring Tricia and go for a pint, or just wander out for a walk by himself, but he knew how that would go over if Sherlock wasn't even letting him go read upstairs. He focused on his book, not really noticing when the music stopped, but certainly noticing when Sherlock plucked the novel from his fingers, setting it aside, and sank down onto the chair with him, straddling him. John tried not to read too much into it when Sherlock cupped his face and gazed at him intently. It was an expression that served one purpose when Sherlock wasn't on a case, but when he was, it was a different story. Still, he had a hard time convincing his body of this fact, and it didn't help when Sherlock kissed him, lightly at first, then deeply.

John reined himself in, because he knew this wasn't going anywhere, not with Sherlock working, and this was just another way for the detective to help himself think, although it didn't do wonders for John's cognitive capabilities. It was still welcome, though, and he kissed back, settling his hands on Sherlock's hips, taking what he could.

"Brilliant," Sherlock said, pulling away from him suddenly, eyeing him closely. "We're going out."

"We are? Don't you think it's an odd time for a date?"

"Wouldn't Saturday evening be a typical time for a date?" Sherlock asked by way of reply.

"Except you're in the middle of a case."

"You can hardly evaluate it as the middle if we've just started and we don't know how long it will take," Sherlock said. "Besides, we're not going on a date. We're going to the last place Aswad and Clayworth went on a date, Thursday night. But, you will have to change, I'm afraid. Put on that white short-sleeved shirt."

"Why that one?" John asked.

"I like you in white," Sherlock replied, kissing him again, then releasing him. "Well, don't just sit there, John! Come on! We've got work to do!"

* * *

"Why here?" John asked as they slipped into the small pub, which was dimly lit and comfortably crowded, not so much that they could not get a table in a corner, where Sherlock could perch on the high bar chair and watch the other patrons.

"I told you, this is the last place they came," Sherlock said, shrugging off his coat, draping it carelessly over the back of the chair. "What do you want to drink?"

"Now you're buying me a drink?" John asked.

"You _are_ my date," Sherlock pointed out, to which John grinned.

"Just beer, whatever they've got on tap."

Sherlock disappeared toward the bar, although John could see him shouldering his way easily through the crowd, using his height and his total lack of concern for other people as leverage to move through the bodies. A few minutes later, he was back with a pint for John and something for himself.

"Drinking on a case, that's a first for you," John commented.

"I don't plan on drinking it," Sherlock replied, moving his chair closer to John's. "But appearances are important."

"Do you think he'll be here?" John asked.

"Doubtful," Sherlock replied. "But possibly. He's hunting for his victims, John. All of them were active in something, which put them somewhere they could be noticed. All of them had hobbies that they did as couples. This," he nodded to the small band that was setting up on the stage at the front of the bar, "was Aswad and Clayworth's hobby."

John reflected that this seemed like a much more normal hobby than the one he and Sherlock shared, which involved chasing down murderers and solving complex criminal puzzles. He wondered, for a moment, what it would be like to have a typical hobby, but couldn't quite put that image and Sherlock together in his mind.

"Don't be daft, we have other hobbies," Sherlock said, reading his mind again.

"Shagging is not a hobby, Sherlock," John said with a roll of his eyes. Sherlock sipped his drink, only a tiny sip, John noticed. He snaked an arm around the back of John's chair, resting it on the chair itself, but absently and lightly stroking John's back with his fingertips.

"Why not?" Sherlock asked. "It's something we do on a regular basis and that we both enjoy. It seems to me this is the very definition of a shared hobby."

John only sighed, picking up his beer and taking a draught. He cast his eyes over the other patrons, most of whom seemed to be in their thirties, but there was a range there, he could tell. He wondered what Sherlock was seeing, then was distracted from that thought when Sherlock's hand settled on his neck and he was pulled in for a kiss.

"What're you doing?" John murmured against his lips. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Keeping an eye on who's not watching us," Sherlock replied.

John frowned.

"What?"

"All of the victims were couples, but heterosexual couples, John. I'm trying to ascertain if anyone is dismissing us as unimportant."

"Why would he even come back here?" John asked, but Sherlock kissed him again, then released him, leaving John wishing there wasn't a case, because it was actually nice to be out with his husband on a date.

"If we're very lucky, and he is from London, perhaps we've stumbled upon his home turf," Sherlock said. "He's decreasing the time between each murder, John. Four months to two and a half to two. I suspect he's been hunting between each murder, trying to find his perfect victims."

"But how are they linked?" John asked.

"Still working on that," Sherlock replied, playing idly with John's hair, his face turned toward John's, but his grey eyes not quite meeting John's gaze, although it would look that way from a distance. "But the decrease in time probably means he's looking more intently. Blast, no one is not paying us undue attention."

It was a strange thing to say, John thought. He'd become used to the looks he and Sherlock got in public, although he suspected a lot of those looks had to do with how Sherlock behaved, especially when he was working. Most people weren't as inobservant as Sherlock thought, and John had seen a lot of people noticing the matching wedding bands, which were an unusual design. But normally he did not have to say anything or even give a warning glare, and in this crowd, it seemed Sherlock was right, and most people did not seem to be noticing them.

"Relax, John," Sherlock ordered, his hand returning to rest on the back of John's neck, massaging lightly. "Drink your beer. Enjoy the music."

_Don't worry at all about the serial killer you're hunting_ , John thought.

"You're not looking for him, I am," Sherlock said and John gave up trying to figure out how his thoughts were so readable that evening. "So let me worry about it."

"Fine," John said, leaning his head back slightly into Sherlock's hand. Having got what he wanted from John, Sherlock smiled, took another small sip of his drink, and returned his attention to the crowd, listening with half an ear to the band and watching for those who were not watching them.


	6. Chapter 6

John awoke a few minutes after four-thirty in the morning to the sound of Sherlock talking to someone. Judging by the tone and the pauses, he was on the phone, not talking to the skull.

"What? No, of course not," John heard from his snug and warm place under the duvet. Sherlock was still in the living room, and the lights on told John he was still hard at work. "Well, you're up now, so you may as well tell me."

John frowned; this didn't sound like a conversation with Lestrade. He checked the clock to make sure he hadn't been misreading the time when he'd first woken up, then hauled himself out of bed, feeling more than a pang of regret when he tossed off the warm duvet and met the chilly air. Folding his arms over his chest to help retain heat, John padded into the living room to find Sherlock on his phone, with that absent gaze into the middle distance that people wore when listening to someone they couldn't see.

"Mm-hmm," he said, then smiled, and looked up when he heard John.

"Who are you talking to at this hour?" John asked.

"Sam," Sherlock replied.

At this, John frowned. Did they really need Interpol help with this case? Was this killer operating outside of England, too? The thought made him feel cold, but it was so easy to travel in Europe now without passing through any passport controls, if one went by train. He was clearly already a traveller to some degree, and there was no reason for John to assume that he was confined to the area between Sheffield and London.

"Well, I don't want to know later, I want to know now," Sherlock said, and John refocused with another frown, but this one more puzzled. This didn't sound like Sherlock was talking about the case.

"Sherlock, why are you talking to Sam at four-thirty in the morning?" he asked, sitting down beside Sherlock on the couch.

"That's what I want to know!" John heard Sam's voice snap on the other end of the line and resisted a smile.

"I want to know how your date with Sandra went," Sherlock said. John stared at him for a moment, wondering if maybe he were dreaming, then plucked the phone from Sherlock's hand too quickly for Sherlock to grab it instinctively, although he did try.

"He'll call you back later. In the morning."

"It _is_ morning!" Sherlock protested.

"Good," Sam said and rung off and John held the phone away from Sherlock, who tried to reach over him to get it.

"Why on Earth did you think this was a good time to ask about that? It's four-thirty in the bloody morning!"

"Yes, and? I've been working all night and am no closer to seeing how all of the victims are linked. And then I remembered that Sam had met up with Sandra Friday night and wanted to know how it had gone." He said all of this as though it were perfectly reasonable and John supposed it was, from Sherlock's point of view.

"Four-thirty is not a sensible hour for most people, Sherlock," he pointed out, to which Sherlock simply shrugged. "And you shouldn't push him."

At this, Sherlock scowled.

"For God's sake, John, he's not bloody made of glass. Have you considered he may not want to be treated like an invalid occasionally?"

John frowned, but made himself pause before replying. That was a good point. Maybe Sherlock was right about that. There was only so much walking-on-eggshells a person could take, after all. He knew that from his own injury and Harry's death. He'd grown tired of it eventually and, after Harry's death, had just wanted people to start treating him like John Watson again, and not hush their voices when they talked about someone being drunk or about a car crash. He supposed Sam might feel the same, to some extent.

"Well, if you want to treat him like a normal person, start by _not_ ringing him in the middle of the night to ask about his personal life," John sighed.

"I'm up," Sherlock pointed out.

"Yes, but you're a crazy person," John replied and Sherlock's lips twitched despite his efforts to keep his expression disapproving. "I'm going back to bed."

"No, I need your help," Sherlock contradicted.

"You don't need my help," John sighed. "You just want me here to bounce ideas off of and talk at. You can do that with me sleeping, you know. Or talk to the skull."

"That's hardly the same!" Sherlock complained. "You're my partner, John, I need your assistance. I cannot find a connection between the victims! But there must be one, if only because the same killer found all eight of them."

John sighed, rubbing his eyes.

"Look, can you give me two more hours to sleep and then I can help out?" he asked. "I'm of no use to you right now. I need more sleep."

"Oh, fine," Sherlock huffed, crossing his arms, giving John an ineffective glare. "I shall try to muddle through without you."

"You do that," John said. "I'll give back your phone if promise not to ring Sam again. Or Tricia. _Or_ Jo. If you need to harass someone in the middle of the night, call your brother."

Sherlock's grey eyes lit up at this prospect and John passed the phone back with some minor reluctance. Then he pushed himself to his feet, feeling sleep creeping into the edges of his mind.

"One of them shares your last name," Sherlock said, almost incidentally.

"What?" John said, turning round on his way back into their bedroom.

"The third female victim, Rebecca Garrott. Her birth name was Watson."

John frowned, trying to think of if he knew any Rebeccas in his family, but could not. He hoped it wasn't some distant cousin, but probably would have heard something from his mother about that by now, since this had happened in September.

"Probably unrelated," he said.

"Undoubtedly," Sherlock replied. "I checked."

John sighed, wondering if this was some ploy to keep him from going back to bed.

"There are thousands of Watsons," he said.

"Tens of thousands," Sherlock corrected.

"Well then we're bound to run into one or two," John said, turning back toward the bedroom. "There's probably dozens of other John Watsons then."

"But you're the one who matters," Sherlock replied and John turned quickly, struck immobile by the unexpected compliment, but Sherlock was back to studying the map, and was not paying him any attention. John wondered if he'd even realized what he'd said. He waited a moment, but Sherlock's focus was diverted back to the case. With a smile to himself, he went back into the bedroom, shut the door against the lights and Sherlock's work, and crawled happily back into bed.

* * *

"Look, I promised ages ago!" John protested, which only resulted in an angry flare in Sherlock's eyes. It didn't help that Sherlock hadn't slept in two days, except for a brief catnap late the previous night. John had forced him both to eat and to shower, listening to grumbling the whole time for both. Sherlock had consented to showering only because John did so with him, but had stayed in for a total of three minutes, enough to wash and that was all, which was much shorter a time than their normal showers, and Sherlock got tetchy when John had been in his way in the tub. He'd eaten in stony silence, glaring at John the whole time, as if John was imposing some unusual punishment on him.

He was about as moody as he'd been the week before, but for different reasons. John had noticed far less subtle balancing-catching over the past two days, but the case was stalling and he could see the frustrating building.

It really didn't help that he had promised to watch Josephine that day for Tricia, so she and Henry could take the day to go celebrate her birthday, which had been the previous week, but Henry had been in Cairo on business. John had taken the day off of work some time ago, in preparation for this. He had reminded Sherlock the week before, as well, before the case had come up, although whether Sherlock remembered that was difficult to tell, since the concussion had caused some things to slip his mind.

Normally, Sherlock would be happy to spend a day with John and Josephine, but the case was consuming his attention, and John could see the prospect of being distracted from it was not sitting well.

"I'll take her over to Tricia and Henry's so you can work," he said.

Sherlock raked his hand through his hair in an agitated motion and John glanced about the flat. Not that he could keep Josephine here today anyway; the flat was more of a disaster than it had been yesterday, and more so yesterday than it had been the day before. There were files spread out everywhere, and if John had thought he'd been lacking available surfaces on Saturday, he had been far wrong. The floor was littered with paperwork and there were photographs covering almost the entire mirror, as well as notes scrawled on the glass in Sharpie, which John wondered if Sherlock realized was not going to come off. They'd have to buy a new mirror once this was over, because he wasn't prepared to put up with a constant stream of black lettering staring back at him along with his reflection.

The scarves with which the victims had been bound were also laid out, side-by-side, divided by case, on the table. Sherlock had folded and tied them so they took up less space, but John could still see faded brown blood stains on some of them and he had put some newspapers under them. Sherlock was not worried about the surfaces on which he also ate, but John was.

"I need you here!" Sherlock snapped.

_You need to eat and sleep_ , John thought, crossing his arms, but refrained from saying it. It would fall on deaf ears anyway.

"Jo can't stay here," John said reasonably, gesturing to the mess about the flat, which was not at all conducive to looking after a fourteen-month-old baby. Nor was Sherlock's current state, even if John did see him hesitate for a moment, agonizing over that. It was always the same when he was on cases, and John wanted him to choose the case, because it needed to be solved. And Sherlock would not do well away from work for the whole day.

Although he could use a break, John considered. Not that he'd take John's suggestion on that.

With a sigh, John stepped forward, carefully avoiding a small pile of files, and laced a hand into Sherlock's hair, stroking the back of his scalp with his thumb. Sherlock resisted for a moment, then began to relax, and John watched as some of the tension ebbed away, but it didn't quite disappear. John kept at it, though, and Sherlock's shoulders lost some of their stiffness and he uncrossed his own arms, leaning his head back slightly into John's hand.

After a couple of minutes, John pulled Sherlock down into a kiss without breaking the contact with his hand. He kept it light and slow and lingering, knowing that any more would be pushing it right now. He wanted to take Sherlock into their bedroom, lie him down, and kiss him everywhere, feeling the gentle shudder of skin against his lips, but he also knew full well that was not about to happen. Sherlock wasn't protesting this, but he'd protest that, even if he desperately needed the break. John had learned fairly well over the years where the limits were when there were cases, especially frustrating ones, and he broke the kiss gently just before he reached that limit.

There was a brief flash of ruefulness in Sherlock's eyes that John knew him so well, then the buzzer pulled both of their attention away and Sherlock gave a pointed sigh. John detached himself with a look in return and went to let Tricia in, following her back up the stairs.

She stopped with Josephine in her arms just inside the doorway, staring at the disaster spread out around her, then at Sherlock, then back at John.

"It's all right, I'm going to take her to your place," John sighed.

"Lock!" Josephine exclaimed at the same time upon seeing her uncle and John saw Sherlock's attention split suddenly, not much, but more so than it had over the past few days. Josephine reached for him from her position in Tricia's arms and, almost without thinking about it, John could see, Sherlock reached back, plucking her easily from Tricia and settling her onto a hip. John repressed a grin of his own when Sherlock and Josephine grinned at one another, and he wondered again at the bond there, and how unexpected it was. As long as he'd known Sherlock, he'd never been very good at judging who the detective would tolerate and even like, and who he wouldn't.

Tricia and John exchanged an amused glance and she pulled out her set of spare keys from her handbag, passing them off.

"What's the case?" she asked and Sherlock glanced back at her, grey eyes refocusing, and John saw approval in them. He wanted to explain it to someone else, John realized. Even though he was stuck.

But maybe a fresh set of eyes, and ears, would help. He didn't know. They'd been practically breathing this case for the past two days and John knew how stuck Sherlock was.

The consulting detective passed Josephine off to John and the girl wriggled in his arms but he didn't put her down, for fear of what might happen to her if he did, among the mess of evidence. Instead, he settled her onto his shoulders, where she pulled painfully at his hair, giggling. John let her, because at least she was temporarily distracted as Sherlock walked Tricia through the scene, animated again. Tricia followed him around the flat, peering at photographs and then being directed to the map on the wall, which was covered in Sherlock's scrawl now.

John didn't worry overmuch about Tricia's reaction to the details and the photographs, because she'd seen her fair share of dead bodies in worse condition in Afghanistan, and she had known Sherlock long enough to become used to his idea of sharing his work. She had come up with her own creative suggestions for experiments for him as well, often surprising John and making him feel slightly green, and knowing she was snickering at him internally because _she_ didn't have to live with it.

"So, there's a crazy man driving up and down the M1 – okay and maybe the M40 – murdering couples for no apparent reason, then cleaning them, posing them and tying them up with scarves? Seems a bit – I don't know, like a lot of effort."

She'd drifted over to the table and was looking at the scarves now without touching them.

"Effort for a reason," Sherlock said.

"What reason?" Tricia asked.

"I don't know," Sherlock growled and John felt a bit edgy – he was on the verge of losing his patience again, not with Tricia, but with the killer.

"Do the colours of the scarves mean something?" she asked, looking back at the table, ignoring the warning note not because she didn't recognize it, John knew.

"Yes, but I don't know what," Sherlock said shortly, grey eyes flashing, expression showing distaste. "Why green? Why the first one only? Why are the rest blue?"

Tricia looked up at him again quickly and John was surprised by the surprised expression on her own face.

"What do you mean, why are the rest blue?" she asked.

Sherlock stared at her as though he thought she might be mad or perhaps blind or just an idiot, which was a lot of possibilities to pack into the grey-eyed gaze, and Tricia frowned at him.

"You're not colour blind, are you?" Sherlock demanded.

"Hardly. Women are rarely colour blind, Sherlock. You ought to know that," she said. "I mean, look, this one here, this is never blue." She pointed to one of the scarves. "It's teal."

John shifted Josephine down quickly, staring between Sherlock and Tricia, who were holding each other's eyes. Tricia looked somewhat confused, but Sherlock looked annoyed, lips twitching into a frown.

"Teal, blue, it's the same thing."

"No," Tricia insisted, "It isn't. It's different – look. You said yourself the colours mean something, and this killer put effort into this. Look," she said again, beckoning him over and John joined them after finding a toy in Josephine's diaper bag to distract her from the fact that none of them were paying attention to her now.

"It's splitting hairs!" Sherlock snapped. "It's all blue!" John cast a warning glance at him at the tone of his voice, because Josephine had picked up on it and given him a curious look, but Sherlock was suddenly not paying attention. He was frozen, staring at the table, but held up a hand quickly when Tricia opened her mouth to reply.

"No," he said, very softly, almost to himself. "Not splitting hairs. Splitting _shades_."

John blinked, but Tricia nodded. Sherlock pressed a palm against his lips, staring at Tricia, then sliding his eyes to John.

"Oh, stupid, stupid," he told himself, stepping up to the table, one hand hovering over the scarves for a moment in an agitated motion, then shaking his head, stepping back, circling the table with quick steps. "But I was right; it _is_ a message."

He looked up at John again and John felt the familiar feeling of seeing Sherlock on the verge of something, whatever had been holding him back suddenly broken. His husband's grey eyes blazed with triumph and not a little appreciation and approval.

"Brilliant," he muttered, then his lips split suddenly into a grin, his face lighting up. "Brilliant! Oh, John, it's inspired! Why didn't I think of this? It's genius! It's a code, John! He's sending a message, oh yes. It's a code. Not in the colours, though, no. In the shades."


	7. Chapter 7

Josephine went to Mrs. Hudson, who was happy to take her in a pinch, and Tricia left before Sherlock could pin her down trying to sort out how many shades of blue scarves there were. John didn't blame her; she had her own plans already, and he knew he himself was trapped as it was. He regretted the lost day with his niece, but there would be others, and he knew there was no way Sherlock was letting him go, not now, not when he'd made a breakthrough.

Especially not one as interesting to him as this.

If Sherlock noticed Tricia leaving, he didn't say so, almost flying about the flat, opening files, reading them in snatches before shuffling them aside for different files, then pulling the photographs off of the map, setting each one down next to the scarves from its scene before leaning over the table, bracing himself on his long arms.

He frowned, moving the scarves here and there, then readjusting their positions, shaking his head.

"What is it?" John asked, having taken the only perch left on the arm of his chair, thinking about how nice it would be to have a pint of beer, only it was far too early in the morning. Perhaps a hot cuppa instead.

It was going to be a long day.

"Look at this," Sherlock insisted and John pushed himself to his feet, joining his husband at the table, frowning at the scarves.

"Which is it?" Sherlock asked, switching two of the scarves from the second murder places. John looked at the photograph, trying to see some difference between them, but couldn't.

"I think they're the same," he said.

"No," Sherlock contradicted. "But the order was lost when the scarves were removed." He pushed himself away suddenly, pacing while avoiding files without looking. John watched the abrupt motion carefully, keeping an eye for any hint of dizziness, but either Sherlock's head was not bothering him anymore or he was getting better at hiding it. Knowing Sherlock, it could be either one, and John didn't want to risk a sudden collapse because he'd been pushing himself too hard against a head injury, even if it had been over a week ago.

"I need someone else," Sherlock said suddenly and John frowned, actually feeling a stab of displeasure at that, then raising his eyebrows at himself. Sherlock was admitting to needing help and he was feeling slighted because he was normally that help?

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Someone with a better eye for colour," Sherlock said. "Who does this for a living. The code is in the shades, John, but I can't break it if I'm not reading it correctly. I need someone who can see the distinctions that I can't."

John was about to ask who Sherlock had in mind – he'd long ago given up being surprised at who the consulting detective knew – but Sherlock held up a hand and John swallowed on the question, knowing that speaking now would only be interrupting.

"This isn't the whole message," he said, half speaking to himself, grey eyes focused on the scarves on the table, widening somewhat. "I need someone who can see the distinctions, yes, but it won't do much good until we get the whole message."

"How can you tell?" John demanded, wondering what Sherlock had picked up on now that everyone else had missed.

"Green, John. The green scarf."

"What about it?" John asked.

"What does green mean?" Sherlock prompted.

"Um, environmental?" John asked. "Reusable bags? Biodegradable cleaners? That sort of thing?"

"No," Sherlock said, shaking his head.

"Well, there's envy. Or money, I suppose, for Americans, right?"

"No, no, John!" Sherlock admonished and John cast about, trying to catch up. Endlessly trying to catch up, it seemed. Sherlock's eyes were on him now, boring into him, and John looked for some clue, some hint.

"Go," Sherlock said softly.

John started, glancing reflexively at the door, then back.

"What?" he asked.

"No, not you, John! Traffic lights! Green means go, start. The very first scarf tied to the very first set of victims was green. It's the beginning of his message, don't you see? The code is in blue, in the shades, but he's letting us know where he wants us to start! Presumably he'll let us know when it ends, too!"

"Why would he do that?" John asked.

"Because he _wants_ someone to get the message, John! Where's my phone, I need to call Lestrade, there will be more than just these four–"

He cut himself off, turning away from John abruptly, looking toward the window, and John wondered what he'd thought he'd seen, or heard. Sherlock strode away, covering the distance in three strides and John joined him, only half surprised to see Lestrade stepping out of a police car, raising his eyes for a moment to meet their gazes through the window.

"It's only been a few days!" John said. "The last gap was two months!"

"Yes, but now he knows the cases have been put together," Sherlock replied. "And he wants his message to be received, John. He's hurrying against being caught, but also against not finishing in case he's found."

Sherlock crossed the flat again, pulling the door open, John right on his heels. Lestrade looked up from the stairwell, somewhat startled, his blue eyes bright in the dim lighting.

"Is the pattern different?" Sherlock demanded. "Is there a red scarf in this one?"

Lestrade stopped halfway up the stairs, and looked from Sherlock to John then back again.

"Now how the bloody hell did you know that?" he asked.

* * *

There was another difference, too, John noted, looking at the bodies. They were positioned the same way, back to back and both shot in the head, like the others had been. Their home had been broken into in a way that gave no clues as to how, and their neighbours had heard nothing, seen nothing, noticed nothing. The police had only been sent round to check on them when the woman, a dental hygienist, had failed to show up for work that day. Her husband was a free-lance writer, and worked from home, so his absence had not been noted by any co-workers.

John resisted the temptation to close their eyes as they stared blankly at opposite walls in their small dining room. The table against the wall was covered in a white cloth that hadn't been stained by blood splatter, because they'd both been shot in the kitchen.

John had asked if anyone thought the placement of bodies in different rooms meant anything, but Sherlock said he did not believe so, and Lestrade seemed to agree. So, what, the killer was moving them because he could? When he'd wondered this out loud, Sherlock had told him this was likely the case.

It was the message that was important, after all. Not the location.

This time, they were tied by only three scarves: a blue one at the head, a blue one in a different shade across the chest, and a red one at the waist.

Which Sherlock was currently running between gloved fingers, almost frowning, but not quite, his eyes glinting in that dangerous way that John was used to but had never at all liked.

He was on a high from dealing with someone who thought like him.

Someone who would think like him if Sherlock ever went off the deep end, John told himself. Which, despite it all, despite Donovan's sombre warning the very first day they'd met, Sherlock had never seemed quite inclined to do. And less so as time went on, even if Donovan wouldn't admit it.

This wasn't the first psychopath they'd dealt with, John reminded himself. Nor even the first since Moriarty had died, and this was not Moriarty. Important to keep that in mind, he insisted. Although he wasn't certain how significant of a distinction it was when someone was running loose murdering people to send a message. Because he could. Because it's what he did.

"Sergeant, what colour is this?" Sherlock asked abruptly, looking up at Sally Donovan, who was standing back, near the archway for the kitchen, half keeping an eye on the work going on in there. She had her arms crossed, and looked displeased when Sherlock spoke to her, but since she'd looked displeased anyway, John didn't think it was directed at the consulting detective. He wondered how bad things were with her and Anderson right now, because she uncrossed her arms and stepped toward Sherlock and the bodies without a single cutting comment.

"Not what colour everyone has said it is," Sherlock said, forestalling her answer. "What colour would _you_ call it, on first impression?"

She hesitated a moment.

"Dark pink," she replied, as though admitting to some transgression. John blinked – he'd have called it red, although he supposed he could see what she meant – but Sherlock grinned widely.

"Brilliant!" he said. "Thank you!"

"Wait, you said green was the start, so red had to be the end," John said. "What is this, punctuation?"

"No, John," Sherlock snapped in a tone that told John it should be obvious – which, from Sherlock's point of view, it probably was. "If there were more to the message, he would have kept going with another blue one about their ankles, but he stopped here, with only three scarves, despite having tied the other victims with four. This _is_ the end of the message."

"But then why pink? Dark pink?"

"What softens a message?" Sherlock asked, looking at John, who looked back, puzzled. The consulting detective gave an annoyed sigh and cast his grey eyes to Lestrade, who had been watching without comment. The DI frowned and shook his head and Sherlock shot back a frown of his own.

"No one?" he asked, almost pleading, and John wondered what it must be like, wanting _someone_ to catch up once in awhile.

"A question?" Donovan said suddenly, blinking as though surprised she had spoken, surprised she'd made the connection.

Sherlock was on his feet in an instant, laughing, grasping her upper arms, startling her.

"Yes, yes!" he said. "Well done, Sergeant! He's not used red to end the message because it's not a statement, it's a question! He's asking us something!"

"But what?" Lestrade demanded.

Sherlock released Donovan, who looked a little shaken at the sudden and unexpected contact from Sherlock who had, as far as John knew, never so much as shaken her hand before. She rubbed her arms where he'd been gripping her and John hoped he hadn't been holding tight enough to bruise, then she shook her head ruefully.

"I haven't the faintest idea, not yet," Sherlock mused, crouching down next to the two bodies again, eyeing the scarves, not really seeing the victims anymore, John knew. He pushed himself to his feet again and John noticed this time when he made a brief fist with his right hand, because that was another way of displacing dizziness.

_Blast_ , John thought. _The idiot – he's overdoing it._ But of course he was, because it was Sherlock, and there was no middle ground when it came to Sherlock.

"I'll need the scarves themselves, Lestrade, but for now…" he paused and withdrew his phone from his coat pocket and took three careful pictures, from different angles, then a close up of each scarf, to get the colour. "I need to go see someone."

"What?" Lestrade demanded. "Who?"

Sherlock ignored him, snapping off his gloves, heading for the door. He cast a brief glance over his shoulder, grey eyes bright, almost amused.

"Coming, John, or are you going to just stand there staring all day?"

* * *

"Mind telling me where we're going?" John asked as he buckled himself into the cab.

"Angelo's," Sherlock said, giving the driver the address, then looking out the window as they pulled into traffic.

"Angelo's?" John asked. "What, he's your expert?"

"Don't be ridiculous, John, he's probably less perceptive than you are when it comes to colour. I need someone better than I am, which means quite a degree of expertise, you know."

John let the slight about his colour vision go, in part because it was true. Sherlock had always had a better eye for colour than he had, which was part of the reason he was a snappier dresser.

"Tricia's obviously better than you," he said, just to get his own dig in. Sherlock shot him a look that was tinged with irritation.

"Yes, thank you for pointing that out," Sherlock said coolly. "I had not at all deduced that on my own, John."

John repressed a snicker and glanced out his window, then back just in time to see Sherlock wrap a hand around the yellow passenger handle on his side of the cab, tightening his fingers more than necessary if he were just holding onto it. His jaw clenched for a moment, then relaxed and his expression cleared again. John pretended not to have noticed, but it was the second dizzy spell that day, not a good sign.

He was glad they were going to Angelo's now, even if he didn't understand why, because he was going to strap Sherlock to a chair and threaten him with having Lestrade pull him off the case if the younger man didn't consent to eat something.

"So, what, your expert will be at Angelo's?"

"Unlikely but possible," Sherlock replied, his expression having returned to normal, his hold on the passenger handle having eased. "But he'll know where she is."

At this, John raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, come off it, John, you're worse than Mrs. Hudson and her ideas about everyone pairing off based on EastEnders! She's a regular there."

"Is she?" John asked. "So someone I'd know then?"

"No, she comes in during the day when you're at work."

"So someone you know?"

"Obviously not, or else I wouldn't have to ask Angelo about her. I saw her there for the first time the other day."

"And yet you know she's a regular?"

"She's an artist, John, and she had a favourite table that was stained with some marks from her pencils and her charcoals, and she had paid for her tea in exact change, stacked up very precisely, so she knows how much her tea is there and keeps enough on her at all times to pay for it."

"Ah," John said. Sherlock had probably figured out her entire life's history in the way she stacked her change and John half wondered if he'd be subjected to it. When this did not happen, John kept an even sharper eye on Sherlock, but the consulting detective seemed fine for the moment, insofar as John could tell. Although John now considered himself an expert in reading Sherlock's expressions, he could still seemed very much like a closed book written in a foreign language. Utterly incomprehensible, when he had a mind to be. And if he'd noticed John noticing the dizzy spells, he'd lock down.

They arrived and Sherlock paid the fare, then herded John out, hustling him into the small restaurant. Angelo grinned at both of them when they came in, going for two menus, but Sherlock waved that away.

"How's the head, Sherlock?" Angelo asked.

"Fine," Sherlock replied shortly. "That isn't important. The other day, there was a young woman here, an artist. I need to know where I can find her."

"Holly?" Angelo asked. "She's not in some kind of trouble, is she?"

_She might be, if Sherlock finds her_ , John thought wryly, wondering if this young woman had any idea what was headed her way through a chance encounter in a diner. He'd have to make sure she was clear on what Sherlock wanted her to look at, because examining some scarves with dried blood stains was one thing, but pictures of the victims would be quite another. And Sherlock was not entirely used to the idea of dealing with people for whom a murder was disturbing, not interesting.

"Not at all," Sherlock said smoothly. "I'm in need of her services as an artist."

"Well, I know she works at the B&Q up in Cricklewood and she goes to school at the Chelsea College, but I don't know what her schedule is. She's usually in here Tuesdays, like last week when you were here."

"Can't wait until tomorrow," Sherlock said shortly. "We'll take a trip up to the B&Q." He paused, barely discernable, but John was already hyper aware and had years of experience listening to Sherlock. "If she's not there, they'll have her home address."

"No," John said and Sherlock gave him a surprised look. "Not until you've had something to eat."

"I don't eat when I'm working, John," Sherlock reminded him with a cocked eyebrow and a cool expression.

"But you will this time," John said. "Or I'll haul you to the hospital when you pass out – which you _will_ at this rate – and have them admit you overnight for observation. That's the third time in the past hour you've had a dizzy spell, because you haven't eaten or slept in the past two days, at least not enough to count for anything, and you were clocked on the head last weekend."

"It wasn't last weekend, it was the weekend before," Sherlock pointed out.

John ignored this, turning to Angelo.

"Coffee, and um, lasagne. And bread. And, hmm, salad. In fact, make it two of everything. And some chips, for good measure."

"I despise lasagne," Sherlock said.

"No, you don't. You're just saying that to try and get out of it. Angelo, now, please, the sooner, the better. Sherlock, half an hour isn't going to kill you, nor is it going to stall out the case."

He grabbed Sherlock by the arms, clearly surprising the detective, who was used to manhandling John whenever he felt like John wasn't precisely where he wanted him to be, or standing precisely the way in which he wanted him to stand, but was unused to having it reciprocated. John ignored this altogether and steered Sherlock to a seat, moving quickly so that the younger man didn't have time to react and push back.

"Sit," he said forcefully, giving Sherlock a meaningful glare.

"I'd do it, Sherlock," Angelo tossed over his shoulder on his way to the kitchen, flashing a grin back at them.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes but sat with ill grace, giving John a glare for good measure.

"I'm not even hungry," he said, sitting with his back straight, keeping his coat on, as if this would somehow keep John from settling them in. John shrugged off his own jacket, shaking his head.

"And I'd not bother you about it if you hadn't taken that knock to the head last week," he said. "But you did, and you're just going to have to get used to the fact that I'm a doctor."

"That hardly comes as a surprise after four years, John," Sherlock pointed out.

"Good," John said as Angelo returned with their coffees and a basket of freshly fried chips. "Then it won't surprise you that we'll sit here until you eat a proper meal."

"It wasn't even as though it was a bad blow to the head," Sherlock muttered, picking up his coffee and sniffing it before adding two sugars to it.

"It left you unconscious for twenty seconds and you're still getting dizzy from it," John said. " _And_ you don't remember it happening, so you're a poor judge of how bad it was. The more you argue, the longer this will take. Eat, because it's either that or I haul you home for six solid hours of sleep."

Sherlock stared at him, presumably to try and judge if he were serious, and John held his gaze, using all the resolve he'd developed in the army, particularly when dealing with drill sergeants and then later, with raw recruits. He cocked an eyebrow when Sherlock seemed unwilling to back down and the consulting detective finally huffed, pulling off his gloves and picking at the chips. John snagged a few for himself and met Sherlock's glare, watching as he ate, reluctantly, but at least he was eating something.

This would probably come back to haunt him, he knew, because Sherlock hated when John got around his defences like this, but at least it wouldn't mean an overnight in the hospital and Lestrade pulling him off the case for being a bleeding idiot.

And he knew Sherlock wouldn't let the case go, not when it had just become interesting, so for all the grumbling he did when Angelo brought their meals, at least he cleaned his plate.


	8. Chapter 8

Sherlock was not at all admitting that he felt substantially better after having eaten, because once that kind of thing got out, there would be no stopping John and his ideas about regularly scheduled meals and calories counts and balanced nutrition. It was, after all, just an anomaly that eating during a case actually helped his thought processes. And it was only because he'd suffered that concussion the previous weekend that there was any kind of deviation in the pattern at all.

He felt satisfied with this explanation and was able to ignoring the knowing looks John was giving him. Just because he felt more alert and focused after eating didn't meant eating had anything to do with that.

It was undoubtedly the coffee.

They cabbed it up to the B&Q in Cricklewood and Sherlock glanced about with interest when they entered the store. There seemed to be all manner of interesting materials here, and he wondered why he'd never bothered to investigate this kind of place before. Who knew what could be found to be used in experiments? Perhaps he should take some notes? He sniffed the air carefully – it smelled of pine and concrete and various plastics and oils and paint.

"You look as though you've stepped into a whole new world," John commented.

"Fascinating place," Sherlock replied. "What do you suppose the logic is behind the layout? Where does one begin to look for painting supplies?"

John stopped, giving him a disbelieving look.

"You mean to tell me you've never been in a hardware store before?" he demanded.

"No," Sherlock said. "Why would I have been?"

John stared at him.

"But where –" he stopped himself, then sighed. "Well, I suppose you never do any repairs around the flat. And you had people who did that sort of thing for you when you were growing up."

" _I_ didn't have people, John," Sherlock said, feeling slightly like he needed to clarify this. "My _parents_ had people. It's entirely different. I wasn't paying them, so they could not, by definition, have been my people."

"Uh-huh," John said, giving him a very John look, tinged with amusement. "If you say so, Sherlock."

"I did want to paint my bedroom once, when I was four," Sherlock offered. "I was not permitted to."

"Probably a wise choice," John said.

"I think I could have done a rather good job," Sherlock sniffed. "Had they only provided me with a ladder. I didn't quite have the height then that I do now."

For some reason, John rolled his eyes at this.

"Look," he said, pointing. "I think the sign that says 'paint' may be a clue as to where we can go. But how do you know we'll find her in the paint section?"

"She's an artist, although she was working with pencils and charcoals, but she had paint stains under her fingernails, where it's hard to get off, and her hands were dry, from cleaning them, probably with varnish."

"We don't even know if she's here," John pointed out.

"No, but if she's not, we can get her home information from her managers."

"And why would they give that information to you?"

"Because I have a police badge."

John stopped again, staring up at Sherlock.

"You– wait– what?" he demanded, somewhat incoherently.

"Nicked it off Lestrade this morning. Don't _worry_ , John, I fully intend to return it. Once I'm finished with it."

"Oh, I don't bloody believe this," John muttered, but completely negated his words by falling into step beside Sherlock, who smiled inwardly at this. Always so rewarding when John caved, although he did enjoy timing the doctor to see how long it would take. Since Sherlock had actually consented to eat something, John was going to be more willing to go along with whatever the detective wanted.

It was such an interesting give-and-take, with John.

"Here we go," John said, pointing up the aisle and Sherlock frowned.

"Where?" he asked.

"That sort of booth in the centre up there," John said. "That's the paint mixing station."

"How do you know that?" Sherlock demanded.

"I've bought my fair share of paint, Sherlock," John said, rolling his eyes. "Used to help my dad paint the house when it needed it, and I've painted a flat or two in my time, when I was a med student."

"Could you paint _our_ flat?" Sherlock asked curiously.

"Um, only if we wanted Mrs. Hudson to evict us," John said. "And it's a bitch to paint over wallpaper, we'd have to take it all down to do it properly. Which is also hard."

Sherlock frowned slightly; he didn't like the idea of that. Besides, he did like their flat precisely the way it was, because it was home. He couldn't imagine Mrs. Hudson actually evicting them, because who would she get to replace them? No one nearly as interesting. But best if she didn't even threaten, he supposed.

"Ah," Sherlock said, smiling then. "There she is."

A young woman had just appeared, standing up from behind the rectangle of counter that was oddly situated, in Sherlock's mind, in the centre of the aisle. They passed by various types and brands of paint and he wondered what the differences were, although yes, clearly, outdoor paint would be different than indoor paint, given the effects of weather on chemicals.

She glanced up at them as they came up the aisle; the store was not particularly busy at that time of day. Her smile was bland for a moment, with no recognition, then she looked slightly surprised.

"Oh, I remember you," she said as Sherlock and John stopped on the other side of the counter from her. "From Angelo's, last week, right?"

"Quite right. Sherlock Holmes. John Watson," he added, gesturing to John.

She grinned, brown eyes bright. Her dyed red hair was still pulled back from her face, but with more deliberation this time, into a braid that let only some strands loose about her face. Sherlock put her at about nineteen or twenty, which suddenly struck him as very young.

"Well, Holly Adams," she replied, even though Angelo had told them her name, remembering her last name after a bit of thought, and she was wearing a name tag that gave her first name and last initial. "What can I do for you? Do you need some paint?"

Sherlock shook his head, pulling out Lestrade's appropriated police badge and flashing it. Her smile froze, then faltered before vanishing quickly and she looked between the two of them, eyes widening.

"Has something happened?" she asked quickly.

Sherlock hated that question. It was ridiculous. Of course things were happening – things were always happening. They didn't stop happening to accommodate others, although the possibility of this being the case struck him as convenient when he needed it. Unfortunately, these rules seemed to apply to him as well.

"No," John cut in quickly, giving Sherlock a glare that seemed unnecessary. "Not to anyone you know, at least. We've actually come for your help on a case."

Sherlock huffed silently at John's interruption but the girl's expression cleared after a moment's hesitation. She looked at John, then back at Sherlock, uncertain now. Had she misunderstood what John had said? He'd been fairly clear.

"Sorry, my help on a case? What kind of help? What kind of case? Why would the police want me?"

"It's a murder investigation," Sherlock said shortly. "You have a talent for colour, yes? I saw your drawing of the cellist last week, it was superb. And you work with paint mixing, so you must have a good grasp of shading and its subtleties."

"Tinting," the girl said, almost automatically, then blinked, as though surprised she'd corrected him.

"Sorry?" Sherlock asked.

She sighed, giving him a bit of a rueful smile.

"It's tinting. Shading is adding black to a colour. Tinting is adding white. That's what we do here. All the paints are white as a base."

John gave Sherlock one of those irritating grins that revelled in the fact that Sherlock had been upstaged by someone, and Sherlock was not at all pleased that this was the second time in one day this had happened. But he ignored it in favour of knowing he had been right about the girl, Holly, and her abilities. Anyone who would correct that kind of detail would be well suited for what he needed her to do.

"Tinting, then," he agreed.

"Does the killer use paint?" the girl enquired.

"No, coloured scarves to bind his victims," Sherlock replied.

At this, she looked alarmed again and Sherlock didn't understand. It wasn't as though the killer was there with them, or there were dead bodies lying about the store. Although that _would_ be interesting, wouldn't it? And perhaps the killer had followed them? He entertained that idea, knowing it was so unlikely as to be preposterous, then reminded himself to berate John later for making him eat and forcing his mind to be distracted as he digested.

"You wouldn't have to see any crime scenes or corpses," John was saying and Holly was looking at him again, with a mixture of confusion and relief. "But photographs of the victims, although they are not very graphic, believe me. What we really need is someone who can distinguish between the shades of blue in the scarves."

"Why?" Holly asked.

"There's a message in the pattern," Sherlock replied. "But I can't distinguish between all of the shades, and without being able to do so, I cannot accurately interpret the message."

She stared at him, as though he was slightly mad.

"Why would someone do that?" she asked.

_Ah_ , Sherlock thought. Well, it wasn't him who was the mad one then, but it bore explaining.

"He's a serial killer," he said. "A psychopath. And he's killed ten people. Your help could prove invaluable."

" _What_?" she demanded, but probably not in response to the last statement, then shook her head. "Are you – you're serious about this, aren't you? It's not going to get me killed, is it?"

Sherlock evaluated the odds.

"Unlikely," he said. "Although I can't account for contingencies such as traffic accidents, of course."

"What?" she asked again, looking at John for clarification. John waved a hand.

"Don't listen to him," John sighed and Sherlock scowled, but the girl's expression seemed a bit clearer. Did she find John more trustworthy? If so, why? "He likes to make sure he's covered all of his bases, but no, you aren't in any danger, even if you help us. Helping us would actually help catch him, and get him put away for quite a long time."

"Life, actually, given the number of people he's killed," Sherlock clarified.

She looked between the two of them again.

"And you need me? You don't have police officers who can do this?"

There probably were, Sherlock knew, but he wasn't about to chase them down when he could access an expert such as her quite easily. And this way, he would owe no favours to anyone on the police force. He much preferred they owed him favours, which they would, if he solved this. With Holly Adams' help. Which Lestrade did not need to know about.

"You're much more qualified," he assured her.

She hesitated again, but Sherlock felt a stab of triumph knowing he'd won, because it wasn't the kind of hesitation that preceded someone refusing.

"What do I need to do?"

"Come with us and look at some evidence – the scarves themselves and some photographs. That's all."

"I'm on a shift right now," she pointed out, as though somehow, Sherlock may have missed that detail.

"We're police," he said, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, not true.

"But if I leave, I don't get paid. And no one else is here to do mixing right now."

Sherlock sighed – why were other people's schedules so troublesome? They had nothing to do with him, yet he was constantly affected by them. It was tedious.

"When do you finish your shift?" John asked.

"About two hours," the girl said.

"Right," Sherlock said, snagging a random business card from his wallet, someone he'd met that he had no intention of contacting anyway, and scribbled their address on it, then pulled out two twenty-pound notes from his wallet for good measure. He jotted his mobile number on the back of the card, too. "When you're finished, take a cab to this address, and ring me on your way over. I don't expect it will take too long, and I shall pay you, of course, for your time."

She held up the two twenties.

"And this is?"

"Cab fare."

"It can't cost that much."

Sherlock shrugged; people were always so fussed about money, which he also didn't understand.

"Use what you need," he said. "The rest will go toward your fee."

She blinked, then nodded, almost automatically.

"Two hours then," Sherlock said, as though to remind her. Holly was looking at the business card, appearing somewhat confused, as if she was surprised she'd agreed to this.

"Okay," she said, and Sherlock smiled encouragingly at her, because people seemed to respond well to this, then grabbed John's arm, towing the doctor away before he could muck things up for them, or before the girl could change her mind.

* * *

John had insisted that Sherlock have Mrs. Hudson with them when Holly arrived at their flat, so, as he put it, "she wouldn't be scared off". Sherlock thought this typical of John, who had unnecessarily odd ideas about how people behaved, but he'd acquiesced, just in case John was right. It would not do to have his expert leaving before she'd accomplished anything, because then he _would_ have to find someone in the police force who could do this sort of thing.

John even made him wait upstairs when the girl arrived. Sherlock listened with half an ear to the conversation below, noting that Holly at least did not seem too put off about turning up at a private residence instead of a police station, although she did enquire about it. John and Mrs. Hudson both reassured her that police investigations sometimes worked this way, although this was not precisely true. But both of them, especially John, could be quite reassuring, when they had a mind to be.

She came upstairs with John and Sherlock gave her a welcoming smile, because she was clearly uncertain about this whole thing. Holly looked about the flat, but did not seem particularly shocked and he knew he'd judged well. As an artist, she was probably used to some disarray in her possessions, particularly her workspace, although he refrained from saying so to John, who liked to accuse him of pandering to stereotypes.

"Thank you for coming," Sherlock said, standing from his chair at the table. She nodded, giving him a quick but not entirely confident smile, looking around again, as though there may be a corpse hidden underneath the mess of files that littered every available surface, and some unavailable ones as well.

She was still in her work clothing, even still wearing her work smock, with paint on her hands from her daily tasks, and a small smear on her cheek, which she did not seem to have noticed. She cast another glance about the flat, this one more evaluating, judging the light, he thought. She was carrying a canvas bag decorated with designs in permanent marker, probably her own work.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Put these on," Sherlock said, handing her a pair of latex gloves. She took them and snapped them on, running her index fingers under the cuffs against her wrists, trying to straighten them, obviously not used to wearing them.

"I need you to look at five set of scarves and match the shades up with the pattern in some pictures," he said. "There are several shades of blue, but I cannot accurately gauge how many. I need an exact count, and I need to know how many scarves are the same shade, and how many are unique shades."

She bit her lower lip nervously.

"What are the pictures going to show?" she asked.

"The victims tied with the scarves," Sherlock said bluntly. "They were all shot, but they were cleaned before they were bound, so you won't see anything untoward in any of the pictures, but there is dried blood on some of the scarves. I've folded them so it shouldn't be visible, however."

At this, John looked surprised, even though he'd watched Sherlock folding the scarves and hadn't asked why, so Sherlock had assumed John had deduced his actions. Holly looked surprised, but for a different reason.

"Well I can deal with blood," she said. "I just don't want to see guts spilling out all over the place."

Sherlock's lips twitched in a smile.

"The photographs are fairly clean, I assure you."

"And that's all you want me to do? Just figure out the shades? That will help you break whatever mad code this lunatic is using?"

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.

"Presumably," he said.

"Well, um, okay, I'll give it a go," she replied. He gestured her over to the table.

"There are five scenes," he said, pointing them out. "The first and last scarf you can ignore, because they're different colours. Keep the scarves from each scene separate – if they become mixed up, it will be difficult for me to sort out the meaning after you've accounted for all the shades. Best just to keep everything in order. None of the police officers who recorded the scenes noted the differences in shade, so I'm uncertain if the order in which I've laid out the scarves is accurate. I need you to determine that first, then how many shades and how many of each shade."

She looked down at the table, eyes skittering over the scarves and photographs.

"Can I tag them?" she asked.

Sherlock blinked.

"Yes, of course," he said. "Number the scarves one through seventeen. Do you know Roman numerals?"

"Ah, a bit," she said. "You want me to number them that way?"

"No, I want you to number them using Arabic numerals, but designate the shades using Roman numerals."

"Why don't I just use regular numbers and then letters for the shades?"

"Because if the shades represent letters, it will become confusing. If you need help, I can provide it."

"Um, okay," she said. "I think I can manage."

"Good," Sherlock said, probably more confident in her abilities than she was. "John, can you please get some twist-ties from the kitchen?"

As John did this, Sherlock fished out several evidence bags, then set work securing each of them to the ties John had fetched from the kitchen. He put them on the table for her and gave her a permanent marker, then pulled out a chair, settling himself onto it.

"Are you just going to sit there and watch me work?" she asked, looking startled.

"Yes," he said. "I want to see what you do. You were working fine in Angelo's while others were watching last week."

"Yes, but, that was– normal," she managed. "This is not. I mean, I've never had to help solve some kind of criminal case before."

Sherlock just shrugged, unconcerned. She cast a look at John, and Sherlock knew his husband was probably wearing an apologetic expression, but indicating silently that he could do nothing about it.

"Well, okay, but what if I'm wrong?" she asked.

"I want you simply to try," Sherlock replied. "If I can't decipher the message based on your judgement, I'll try other avenues to solve it."

She stared at him, trying to determine if he were serious, then sighed and bent over the scarves, brushing her hair behind her ears, even though it was still in its braid. Sherlock watched carefully and curiously; she was quite tense, and was avoiding picking up any of the photographs, even though she examined them studiously, bending over the table to narrow her eyes at the colours of the scarves.

Hesitantly at first, she shifted the scarves from the first murder around, then shook her head, sucking in a deep breath. For a moment, her eyes flashed to him, but he just nodded, gesturing for her to continue. She moved to the second case and then frowned, shaking her head, shifting the third and fourth scarf positions, and Sherlock saw her confidence return suddenly.

"Can I have a sheet of paper?" she asked and he provided her with one. She began making quick marks, eyes darting over the scarves, over the photos. Holly rearranged most of the scarves from the third murder, save for the fourth one, then nodded at the arrangement he'd made for the fourth case. She glanced back and forth between the fifth case, the fourth, and the second, and make some quick marks on her paper, eyes darting over the photos again, over the scarves.

Then she pulled back, pursing her lips, counting silently by tapping her left index finger in the air. Sherlock heard John shift behind him – he'd taken up his perch on his chair and was staying silent, but seemed about to ask a question. Not wanting to interrupt the girl, Sherlock held up a hand and John stilled again.

Holly nodded to herself, dark eyes flashing, then began to label the bags Sherlock had provided for her, twisting one onto each of the seventeen scarves.

"You have ten different shades of blue," she said, finally, after about twenty-five minutes of concentration, writing, and labelling. "Look here. Four of them repeat. This one," she pointed to one that Sherlock had suspected was the most common, "repeats four times. This one and this one each repeat twice. And this one repeats three times. That leaves you with six that don't repeat at all."

He nodded and she jotted this down on the paper for him.

"This one is your lightest shade," she said, pointing to the last scarf from the first murder. "And this one is your darkest." This was the second scarf from the second murder. "This one, the one that repeats four times, is the one right in the middle. You have a lot that are close to one another, but your lightest and darkest are quite distinct. The ones in the middle are closer to one another."

"But you're sure they're different?" Sherlock asked, because he was not certain he could see a distinction.

"Yes, definitely," Holly replied. "This one, that only appears once, it's just a hair darker than the one that appears four times. And these two," the fourth scarf from the second murder and the first scarf from the third, "they're a shade off from each other, too, at least in this spectrum he's using, but darker than the most common one. What do you think this is? The alphabet? Numbers?"

"I'm not certain yet," Sherlock said. "Anything else you can tell me about them?"

She looked at the sheet on which she'd jotted all of her information, then shook her head.

"No," she admitted. "That's it."

"Brilliant," Sherlock assured her, giving her another smile. "Very well done."

"I hope it helps," she said.

"If it doesn't, I'd be surprised. One moment." He fished his wallet from his coat pocket and opened it, pulling out four fifty pound notes and passing them off to her.

"I can't take that!" she exclaimed.

"A fairly standard payment for someone with your level of expertise," he told her.

"But I've barely done anything," she said. "It's taken me no time at all."

"Would it count as nothing if you helped apprehend a serial killer?" he asked. "Please, take it, but it's also imperative you do not mention this case. It's an ongoing investigation, so any discussion could jeopardize the results."

She glanced up at him, trying to evaluate if he was serious, and Sherlock put on his best responsible policeman face. This was actually true, but he also didn't want Lestrade to get wind of her involvement.

She hesitated again, but when he didn't withdraw the money, she accepted it.

"All right," she agree. "Anything else?"

"No, thank you. John will see you downstairs and ensure you get a cab. Thank you for your assistance."

She nodded, pulling off the gloves and Sherlock took them, heading into the kitchen to bin them. John took the girl down to the street and came back a few minutes later, to find Sherlock in front of the mirror, having marked seventeen underscores on the glass, followed by a question mark. He ignored the groan John gave at the sight of the mirror, because they'd obviously have to buy a new one, and met the doctor's reflected eyes.

"We know how he was trying to send the message," Sherlock said, nodding at the reflection of the table behind them. "Now we just have to determine what it is he's trying to say."


	9. Chapter 9

John was glad when Sherlock let the girl, Holly, leave without harassing her unduly or pestering her with questions. He was impressed that the consulting detective seemed to be content with her assessment of the shades in the scarves, which probably meant it was accurate. He saw her to the door and waited as she hailed a cab, ensuring she was off safely. Then he shook his head as the car disappeared up the street before shutting the door against the chilly November air and heading back upstairs. There were a number of things vying for his attention, not least that Sherlock had nicked Lestrade's police badge and there would be hell to pay if the DI ever found out.

That was shunted out of its position of importance when John stepped back inside and found Sherlock had marked up the mirror even more, writing seventeen underscore lines on the glass, followed by a question mark. He groaned and met Sherlock's eyes in the black-lined glass, but Sherlock ignored this, refocusing instead on the puzzle in front of him. With this sort of thing available to him, John knew he was defenceless.

"Try to find a connection between the victims, at least the most recent two pairs," Sherlock ordered him in a tone that indicated he didn't even consider that John wouldn't listen. John held his ground for a moment, but when Sherlock didn't blink or let alone acknowledge that John was resisting, the doctor sighed, giving in. He always gave in, it seemed. Well, not always, but often. But he didn't really mind, although sometimes it was best to make Sherlock think he did. If only because it occasionally made Sherlock think up creative ways to show his appreciation, or to wheedle John into doing as he wanted.

John fished around for some files and took two of the pictures off of the table from their places beside their scarves. He shook his head – this was absurd, wasn't it? What kind of person did this sort of thing, sent this sort of message? Was it a game?

That thought made John think of Moriarty and he repressed a shudder. An unbidden thought leapt up – had the man somehow faked his own death and was now playing with them again? But no, it was easy to think that, because it meant that there weren't other people out there just as mad, just as intelligent perhaps, or close enough to as made no difference, and with just as much disregard for human life. John thought of that cabbie from their first case, whom Sherlock had told him at some point had also been a proper genius. He didn't know if that cabbie had been a psychopath, but if this killer was, it explained the high level of intelligence. Unfortunate how those two things went together.

_Wouldn't it be easier if we lived in a world where the psychopaths were generally dim?_ he asked himself, shaking his head over the files, standing up to rescue a pad of paper and a pen from under the mess, then deciding he needed a cup of tea. It was already past mid-afternoon and although they'd eaten lunch at a nearly normal lunch hour at Angelo's, John had a feeling it was going to continue to be a long day. It seemed like last week that he'd actually seen Tricia, not just this morning, even though Josephine was still downstairs with Mrs. Hudson. Probably napping now, John thought, eyeing the time, or having just woken up. He could do with one of those himself.

Instead, he made two cups of tea, delivering one to Sherlock who took it out of habit and held it for a few minutes before putting it down and forgetting about it. He was still stationed in front of the mirror, chewing on his lower lip, the unstoppered felt pen held between his thumb and forefinger. John watched him for a moment, and Sherlock drummed the fingers of his left hand against the surface of the table just beneath the mirror, his wedding band catching a brief glint of light.

"You're distracting me," he said without ever meeting John's eyes.

"Sorry," John said, turning back to his own assigned work, sipping his tea, then putting the mug very carefully on the floor next to his foot, in the absence of anywhere else to put it. He opened two of the files, clearing a space for himself on the table, hoping that dislodging the other files wasn't going to get him snapped at.

He began to jot down information about the couples' family members and close friends that were indentified in the reports. It was still early on the most recent murders, of course, but Lestrade had sent over what he could while they'd been waiting for Holly to arrive from her shift at the store.

He paused, glancing at the photograph of the most recent couple that he'd taken from the table and paper clipped back to the file folder. Linda Gordon and Frank Gordon were older than Sara Clayworth and Tarik Aswad, both in their late forties. For a moment, John thought he had a flash of insight, checking to see if they had children, but yes, the Gordons had two grown sons, and the second couple had adult children as well, and grand children. So it was coincidental that the other three couples hadn't, probably because of their ages, he guessed. And – he checked – Aswad and Clayworth had only been married about seven months. So if they'd been planning on a family, they hadn't made it there.

He sighed, scrubbing his eyes once with his hands and put the file from the second case away, returning to the two cases from London. He checked the information on the Gordons' sons, but although they were adults, they were still young, in their very early twenties. He wondered what it was like to be orphaned at that age, and so violently. But they didn't appear to know Clayworth and Aswad, and both were away at university, so they were unlikely to have come in contact with the first set of London victims.

John made notes, trying to tie names together, trying to tie events together, but having no luck. There seemed to be no overlap at all, in family, in associates, in business, in where they'd been, in where they lived. He picked up his tea again and sipped it, then made a face, because it had gone lukewarm while he'd been working and he hadn't noticed. Sherlock was still stationed in front of the mirror, staring at it as though he'd get an answer if he just looked long enough and hard enough.

"Could this just be random?" John asked.

"They had to all have been somewhere where the killer could identify them, John. And since he was sending a message, it's unlikely he picked them at random."

"Yes, but he could have just been standing on a street corner for all we know," John pointed out.

"In Sheffield and Codnor and Bicester and London? No, there was some reason he was in all four of these places. It's there, we just have to find it."

John muttered under his breath – he was having doubts, and if it was there, the man had gone to great lengths to ensure it wasn't easily visible. But then, that wasn't the point was it? The message was the point. Everything else was probably secondary to him.

"Well, I can't find anything connecting the London cases," he sighed.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Sherlock murmured and John wondered where he'd trotted that out from. He glanced back over his shoulder, but Sherlock was bent over a sheet of paper now, tapping the pen against his lips, this time at least not getting black marks on his skin.

John drained his tea, even though it wasn't hot anymore and tried to go back to work. Outside, the winter sun edged toward the horizon, finally dropping below the buildings across the street and vanishing, leaving them in growing twilight. John turned on some lamps and when he did so, Sherlock pushed himself from the mirror with a snort of disgust, taking out his violin and settling it onto his left shoulder to play.

John took his empty tea mug and Sherlock's full but untouched one into the kitchen, emptying it into the sink. He wished Sherlock would drink it, because dehydration wasn't going to help him any, but John also knew he'd probably exhausted his supply of having Sherlock do what he wanted by making him eat earlier that day.

He walked around the flat carefully and music followed him as he did so, rolling his shoulders, rolling his neck, trying to work out the kinks. If he wasn't careful, his left shoulder was going to start protesting, aching, and Sherlock was nowhere near in the mood to help him deal with it. John let himself take a break as long as there was music, which alternated between rapid pieces and slow, almost melancholy strains, which seemed somehow fitting for the day and the early November night that was upon them.

When Sherlock stopped playing and carefully restored his violin to its case, John sat down in front of the files again with a weary internal sigh, glancing at the mess of notes he'd made, none of which found any common ground between the two London cases. Sherlock went back to his station in front of the mirror and John bit his lower lip, trying not to tap his pen against his paper, knowing it would irritate the detective.

A sudden hiss made him look up, twisting over his shoulder, expecting some sort of result, but Sherlock was bent over, head dropped forward, thumb and forefinger of his right hand pressed against the bridge of his nose, with his left arm braced against the table. John could see the muscles in his jaw working and was on his feet in an instant, berating himself for being surprised.

"Sit now," he ordered, but Sherlock shook his head, eyes still pressed closed.

"I'm fine," he snapped in reply, but John saw his braced arm tremble, once.

"You're not fine, you're bloody well pushing yourself to the point of collapse," John snapped back.

Sherlock raised his head to glare at him and John could tell he was forcing the expression to be the only thing that showed. John gripped Sherlock's arms and wondered at innate Holmesian obstinacy, because Sherlock was not going to just let him win.

"I'm fine, John!" Sherlock repeated. "Let me go."

"Not a bloody chance, Sherlock," John snapped back. Honestly, he'd been better at pacing himself after the crash Moriarty had orchestrated all those years ago, almost three now, he realized. And probably because he remembered bits and pieces of it, more than he'd ever let on to John, the doctor suspected. And he'd been able to see a lot of his injuries – John had caught Sherlock with a hand mirror in the bathroom trying to see the stitched and healing cut on the crown of his head, but it was at a very awkward angle.

He probably half disbelieved he'd even been injured, if he couldn't recall it or see it.

John wondered how someone so brilliant could be so bloody stupid but held his tongue against asking. It certainly wouldn't help.

"You haven't slept properly in over two days, and even last time, you probably only got four or five hours, despite the fact that you're still recovering from a concussion!" John snapped. "You haven't had anything to drink since that coffee at Angelo's, and that was the only real meal you've had in the past two days. You need to _stop_ this, Sherlock, before it bloody stops you."

"I'm perfectly capable of managing myself," Sherlock replied coolly.

John ignored this, steering Sherlock toward the bedroom, despite the fact that Sherlock resisted. Sherlock was stronger than he looked, but had a tendency to forget that John was actually stronger than him, when he had a mind to be, even if John was shorter. Years in the army hadn't amounted to nothing.

And he wasn't letting some sodding serial killer get the better of his husband.

He shut the bedroom door behind them and Sherlock darted around him, but John pressed himself up against the door, shaking his head.

"Don't make me call Mycroft and have him commit you to a hospital for enforced sleep," he threatened.

Sherlock stilled suddenly, drawing back, eyes flashing and expression tense.

"You wouldn't," he countered.

"Try me," John replied, letting a growl slip into his voice. He hated to do it, but he knew it would work, because it was a threat that could be carried out.

And it did work. Sherlock relented, giving him an offended glare. John ignored this as well, wondering what kind of tally he was racking up in Sherlock's mind, because Sherlock was undoubtedly storing this as important knowledge that would require future consideration.

"It's not even gone six, John," Sherlock pointed out.

"And you still haven't slept in over two days," John rejoined, shaking his head. Knowing Sherlock wasn't going to help him out, he fished out a pair of pyjamas and tossed them on the bed, before setting to work divesting Sherlock of his clothing.

* * *

This wasn't entirely bad, although Sherlock was damned if he was going to let John in on this. The doctor was more than a little experienced in getting Sherlock out of his clothing, although, admittedly, this didn't usually involved getting him back into something else immediately. It wasn't unheard of, but much less common. John's hands worked quickly and efficiently, almost a bit clinically, and Sherlock made no move to help him, ensuring to keep the displeased glare on his face.

If he was going to be forced to take a nap like some infant, he'd at least enjoy a part of it, he decided. It wasn't as though he even felt dizzy anymore. Somehow, he suspected that pointing this out to John would be fruitless. Honestly, the man was the most stubborn person on the planet, possibly with the exception of Mycroft.

He kept his expression stern but appreciated the sensation of John's fingers against his bare skin, noting that John slowed down after a few moments to let his touch linger here and there. Sherlock feigned further detachment when John dispensed of his trousers and underwear, because it wouldn't do to actually encourage John about this. Nor would shagging help his thought processes on a case.

Once John had Sherlock changed, which took some time, because Sherlock's lack of cooperation was not entirely passive, he shuffled the detective into bed and left the room with a strict warning not to go anywhere. Sherlock considered how long it would take to climb out the window onto the fire escape and then pick the lock to get back in the front door, but John was back before he could pin down the time required, bearing two glasses of water. He made Sherlock drink both, watching with impatiently crossed arms, then shucked his jeans, leaving them in an untidy heap on the floor, pulling on a pair of sweats instead. He climbed in beside Sherlock.

"Are you just going to sit there until I fall asleep?" Sherlock asked.

"If I have to," John replied. "Lie down."

"And if I don't?"

John shot him a pointed look, but these really had nothing on Tricia's, even if John could threaten him with more dire consequences, like withholding sex. He was still somehow less intimidating. Possibly because Sherlock suspected John wouldn't last long himself under that threat, whereas he was certain Tricia could make his life rather painful in inventive ways, if she was ever so inclined to try.

But John knew something about him that Tricia did not, and employed it now, lacing a hand into Sherlock's hair and stroking the back of his scalp gently with his thumb, taking care now to avoid the healing cut.

"John!" Sherlock growled, but was unable to help himself as he relaxed, feeling the irritation and tension draining away. He tried to hold onto these but could not, cursing himself for having this weakness and John for being clever enough to have found it and learned to exploit it.

But he couldn't bring himself to be truly angry, not really.

"Just a few hours, Sherlock," John said reassuringly. "It will do you a world of good."

"I'm not even tired," Sherlock protested, but his eyes fluttered closed, giving lie to his protest. He sighed, giving up then, knowing he'd long ago lost anyway, and consented to snuggle under the duvet, John joining him. Sherlock hesitated a moment, then just surrendered entirely altogether, wrapping himself around John. If he was going to be trapped in bed at a completely unreasonable hour of the day, so was his husband.

He closed his eyes, telling himself he was not really going to sleep anyway, focusing on the sensation of John's hand on the back of his head, and drifted off without quite intending to.

* * *

Sherlock woke up two minutes after midnight and dislodged himself enough from John's sleeping hold to crane his neck back and check the time on the clock beside the bed.

_Good_ , he thought, a smile twitching on his lips. _Now John can't say I haven't slept at all today._

He allowed himself a moment to feel triumphant about that, disregarding the fact that "today" was only two minutes old. John was sleeping very soundly, their legs tangled, the doctor's arm wrapped possessively around Sherlock's waist, his head on Sherlock's pillow. Before Sherlock had moved to check the time, John's face had been nuzzled against his neck, which was most definitely not an unpleasant feeling.

He was tempted to just lie there and watch John sleep, his eyes adjusting to the near darkness that was offset only slightly by city lights filtering in around the edges of the curtains and the light from the clock. John had no idea how wonderful it was to just watch him sleep. Of course, it was equally wonderful, perhaps more so, to wake him up and watch his face fill with desire and anticipation.

But not tonight. There was a puzzle that wanted solving, so Sherlock disentangled himself carefully but expertly from John's grasp, gently rolling John onto his back. The doctor made a sleepy protest but snuggled down back under the duvet when Sherlock pulled it up to his shoulders. He kissed John lightly on the forehead and slipped out of bed, opening and shutting the door silently. John had, at some point, conscientiously turned the lights off in the flat, so Sherlock moved through the darkness from memory, turning on a single lamp near the mirror and another near the table, where the scarves were laid out.

He picked up Holly's notes and cast a glance over the scarves and the tags, identifying the shades easily now that they were distinguished and marked for him. Absently, he chewed on his lower lip, eyes dancing over the information, even if it was information he could not quite decipher.

Sherlock snagged another pen and paper and drew seventeen lines, followed by a question mark, then tapped the pen against the paper, thinking.

What was it? An alphabetic cipher? If so, was it in English? A reasonable assumption, since this was England, after all, but it need not necessarily be the case. Or was it numeric? A combination of the two?

Best to start with the basics, he thought. This was meant to be deciphered and read, and it was quite well hidden already. The killer wouldn't want it to be too difficult, presumably. It was already quite tricky as it was.

Sherlock found the palest shade of scarf, from the first murder, and wrote an "a" in the appropriate place. He found the darkest shade and wrote a "z" for the second scarf in the second murder.

It didn't amount to much, because if he was bracketing himself with the whole alphabet, he had a lot of room for error. What if it wasn't "a"? What if it wasn't "z"? What if it wasn't both?

He tapped the pen against his lips, then pushed himself away from the table, taking Holly's notes with him, standing in front of the mirror for a moment, then shaking his head at his reflection.

He desperately wanted to play his violin, but John was sleeping, and he was more inclined not to wake John up, lest his husband be subsumed by the doctor again and he started insisting on more sleep.

Sherlock didn't _need_ more sleep. He was tired of his body making unreasonable demands, just because he'd taken a thrown beer glass to the head. It was unsuitable that he should react in such a typical manner, and he just needed to start listening to himself.

And he felt rested enough as it was, having managed six hours of sleep, which was his normal habit when he did sleep.

He paced about the flat, tapping his fingers together lightly, playing the violin in his mind. It was a pale substitute, but at the worst of times when he couldn't play, it made somewhat of a difference.

He stood over the scarves again, eyes narrowed, trying to think, trying to _see._

There were ten shades, according to Holly, and the one that repeated itself was in the middle. But in the middle at the fifth position or the sixth? This was tricky, since there was an even number. Had it been an uneven number, eleven, for example, there could have been an easily definable middle with five others on either side.

What if he were approaching this the wrong way?

He picked up the pen and paper again, leaving the "a" and "z" where they were, but concentrating on the four spots with the most commonly repeated shade. It would have to be quite a common letter, so a vowel was a good choice, but it was in the middle, so it could be a consonant from the middle of the alphabet.

He chewed on his lower lip.

"O" would be a decent choice, as with "l" and "n".

Unless, of course, the pattern was skewed toward lower letters, like "s" or "t".

He ignored this, jotting the three letters he'd come up with in the four required positions, then frowned at the page. He could think of no word that contained "alz" "anz" or "aoz", although it was impossible to judge right now where the word breaks were.

But, "n" was the middle of the alphabet, or "m", depending on what side one fell on, although "m" was less common, so less likely to be repeated so frequently.

He scratched out the "l"s and the "o"s and jotted in the "n"s in the four appropriate spaces, leaving him with

_ _ anz_n n_n_?

Which made no sense.

He checked Holly's notes again. There was a shade darker than the "n" shade, so he wrote in an "o" between the "z" and the "n".

Still, that made no sense.

_Something zone?_ he thought. He sketched an "e" in behind the second "n" and then realized if it was the case, there were one more, so filled that in as well.

_ _anzone_ _ _ _en_n_?

It _still_ made no sense.

Sherlock glared at the paper and then up at the mirror. He was certain about the "n"s and so filled those in on the glass, leaving the others, which he wasn't sure about.

He pushed himself away again, padding through the flat in the silence, suppressing a growl at his inability to play the violin at the moment, at the unnatural stillness, which he'd never liked in the flat. He stopped by the bedroom door and opened it a hair, listening to John's breathing, taking a moment to appreciate that, to help it refocus him. Then Sherlock eased the door shut again, raking his hands through his hair in irritation.

"What do you _want_?"he hissed at the mirror, not really at his own reflection, which stared back at him from behind the black marks.

He paused suddenly, thinking of that ridiculous American game show John sometimes watched with Mrs. Hudson, where they spun a wheel and purchased letters to solve a puzzle.

Good lord, was the killer a fan, too? It would certainly explain a lot. Sherlock suddenly felt as though he'd been shoehorned into being a contestant against his will, only there was no prize, but a penalty for failure.

After all, what would the _next_ message say, and how long would it be?

He was approaching this wrong, he realized, because those game show contestants usually eliminated vowels as quickly as possible. Sherlock snatched Holly's notes again and frowned at them. He had two vowels in place already, so that left him with three others. Quickly, he counted off their positions in the alphabet, then tried to gauge where they might fall in the shades.

He pencilled them in tentatively.

I_anzone_i_ _enin_?

It still made no sense. What about a zone? And surely that was incorrect, because it would be "a zone" not "an zone". Unless, of course, the killer didn't speak English as a first language and was sending a complicated _and_ mangled message.

Or it wasn't in English.

He sighed, chewing on his lower lip.

But then, no, he wrote in a "g" at the end of the sentence, because if it was English, it made sense.

He was still wrong, he could feel it.

He began pacing again, turning the words over and over in his mind, trying to peg something down that could have that strange beginning. He was aware he was faced with the very real problem that, if it wasn't English, he was stuck unless it was French or German. He had resolved to learn Portuguese once, hadn't he? It had never happened. John spoke some Dari Persian, bits and pieces only, from in his time in Afghanistan, but couldn't read or write it, Sherlock knew. Sherlock's German wasn't as strong as it should be, since he didn't use it as much as he did his French.

But in London, it could be anything.

"Damn," he murmured, shaking his head, stopping to stare at the mirror. He met his own eyes and narrowed them, raking a hand through his hair again, ignoring the fact that it was dishevelled now from both sleep and his frustrated thoughts.

"I can hear you," he whispered to the unknown killer, the man who had left the complicated message, wanting to be understood and acknowledged, but obviously not without effort. "But I can't _understand_ you."

He chewed on his lip again and then froze.

No.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be so simple.

He stared at himself, scarcely daring to breathe, then stepped slowly toward the mirror again, looking down at the sheet. Still holding his breath, as though letting it out would break the spell and force the universe to notice and negate his work, Sherlock crossed out the "z" and wrote in a "y".

He'd missed a vowel, which was not always a vowel.

He closed his eyes, seeing the missing letters slot themselves into place.

It couldn't be that easy, could it?

But it was a short message, a question.

So elegant in its simplicity, and so pointed in its purpose.

What _else_ would a serial killer want?

Sherlock had deduced the first set of these murders was not the killer's first actual murders. How long had he been killing, and where? Hadn't Moriarty started in early adolescence? If this man was a psychopath, and Sherlock knew he was, and he was even a fraction as intelligent as Moriarty, he could have been killing for years and have had no one notice, no one draw it back to him. It was part and parcel of what psychopathic serial killers did.

It was never their fault, because they did not understand blame or guilt or remorse.

He unstoppered the felt tip pen that lay on the table beneath the mirror and filled in the blanks on the glass quickly, as though delaying would make it wrong, make the whole thing fall apart.

Isanyonelistening?

He drew sharp vertical lines between the words, separating them more visibly on the glass.

_Oh_ , he thought, staring at the letters, not even seeing his own reflection now.

Is anyone listening?

Sherlock let out a sharp breath, feeling the silence in the flat expand, the mess around him dissolve, the night ebb away, so there were no sounds from outside, no city spread around him, no John sleeping in the next room, no Mrs. Hudson downstairs, nothing, nothing but himself and the killer and the beautiful simplicity that connected them.

It was like a dance, a tentative dance with an unknown partner that he could neither see nor hear, but who had reached for him across nameless distances, both of them moving through London, removed, as strangers. But Sherlock knew _him_ , if not his name, if not his identity, and the killer didn't know, not yet. He had stretched to find someone, anyone, who could hear him.

Is anyone listening?

"Yes," Sherlock whispered.


End file.
